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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



DOCTRINES AND GENIUS 



OP THE 




lerlaod Presbyterian Church. 



By Rev. A. B. MILLER, D.D., LL.D., 

President of Waynesburg College, Pennsylvania. 



JS s 



14 X 



NASHVILLE, TBNN. : 
Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House, 

1892. 



^T 






T HE LIBRARY! 
OFCQNGRESf 

Washington 










Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1892, by 

The Board of Publication of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



INTRODUCTION. 



"He that entertains himself with moral or religious treatises will im- 
perceptibly advance in goodness." — Samuel Johnson. 

" I have gained the most profit, and the most pleasure also, from the 
books which have made me think the most." — Guesses at Truth. 

To one of the world's great reformers, equally eminent as a 
preacher and as a theologian, is attributed a frequent repeti- 
tion of the obvious truth that " only a reading people can be a 
growing people." The Board of Publication of the Cumberland 
Presbyterian Church has acted wisely in proposing to publish 
and place in the hands of our people a series of good books. Of 
a denomination of Christians it is true, as of the individual 
Christian, that in the measure in which it reads will it be intelli- 
gent, free, liberal, and progressive. There may not be too much 
reading of newspapers and other transient and fragmentary mat- 
ter, but there is certainly a pernicious tendency among Church 
members to neglect the reading of good books ; and it is the 
writer's ardent wish that the special work undertaken by our 
board may have a salutary influence in correcting this tendency. 

Though this work has been furnished in response to a request 
from the Board of Publication, the author was left free in the 
selection of a subject, and the selection was determined by a de- 
sire to produce, if possible, a plain and thoughtful book that 
would interest and profit the reader. To promote growth in 
grace, to enlarge our views of religious life and duty, and to 
broaden and strengthen the foundations of our Christian char- 
acter, patient reflection on the great Bible themes discussed in 
this book have a potency that is known only to those who have 
experienced it. "All graces," says a thoughtful writer, "begin 

(iii) 



iv INTRODUCTORY. 

in knowledge and are increased by knowledge." By that 
patient reflection which brings truth into contact with the soul., 
and by that obedience which accepts truth as the law of our 
lives, are we transformed "from glory to glory." 

To some of our readers it may seem that too little attention 
has been given to the support of our positions by Scripture ref- 
erences, but it has been our aim rather to show the reasonable- 
ness of the fundamental doctrines accepted by all Christians, and 
of the doctrines which distinguish us as a denomination. The- 
ology as a science must be, if true, a reasoned correlation of the 
teachings of the Bible in a system harmonious in all its parts. 
A system in opposition to man's reason can not be from Him 
who made man, and such a S}^stem man must ultimately reject. 
For the Cumberland Presb3^terian system we claim this high and 
final sanction of reasonableness. In the mother Church, because 
of a S3'Stem at war with man's consciousness and reason, there 
is unrest from center to circumference. 

To "search the Scriptures" is the surest way to a satisfying 
faith in the Scriptures as a rule of moral and religious practice 
whereby human life may realize the highest possible good, and 
it is hoped that, on this broader plane, the chapters which fol- 
low may stimulate to more extended research on a subject so 
vitally related to our present and eternal welfare. 

" The Christian faith, 

Unlike the timorous creeds of pagan priest, 
Is frank, stands forth to view, inviting all 
To prove, examine, search, investigate, 
And gives, herself, a light to see her by." 

The author aimed at a faithful statement of the historical and 
current sense in which the Church interprets its Confession on 
the subjects herein treated. In view of the recent discussions 
as to the accepted doctrine of the Church touching the Atone- 
ment, he has been at pains to ascertain the views of a number of 
the older ministers of the body, which he would gladly have 



INTRODUCTORY. v 

cited had space permitted. The brief chapter on that subject, 
which is rather a simple statement of the prevailing view of our 
theologians than an attempt at an argument in support of the 
view itself, accords thoroughly with the views collated in the 
manner above named. 

It is due the Board of Publication that it be here stated that 
the responsibility for the delay of the appearance of this work 
rests wholly with the writer, and he takes occasion to acknowl- 
edge the patient forbearance of the board. The work has been 
written in such brief intervals as could be so appropriated amid 
the labors incident to the author's relation to Waynesburg Col- 
lege. As it was begun, so it is now finished and sent forth in 
hope that it may be in some measure a useful and acceptable 
offering to the Church to which the author has devoted many 
years of labor. A. B. MII^ER. 

Waynesburg, Pa., July 16, 1892. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

CHAPTER I. 
Reasons for the Volume Herein Offered to the Reading Public, . i 

CHAPTER II. 
Relation of Doctrine to Duty and Destiny, 5 

CHAPTER III. 

Of the Scriptures and the Progressive Development of their Mean- 
ing, and the Use and Abuse of Creeds, 9 

CHAPTER IV. 
Some Account of the Leading Creeds of the Christian World, . . 18 

CHAPTER V. 
A Fuller Account of the Origin of the Westminster Symbols, . . 35 



PART II. — Doctrinal Statement and Exposition. 

CHAPTER I. 
Of the Holy Scriptures, 47 

CHAPTER II. 
Of the Holy Trinity, 66 

CHAPTER III. 
Of the Decrees of God— A General View of the Subject, ... 93 

CHAPTER IV. 

Decrees in the Creeds of the Churches, 116 

(vii) 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 
Creation, ••.. 166 

CHAPTER VI. 
Creation— Continued 193 

CHAPTER VII. 
Providence, .... 220 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Fall of Man — Effects on the Original Transgressors — Effects on 

the Race — The Covenant of Grace, etc., 250 

CHAPTER IX. 

Free Will — The Moral Law — Moral Government — Man's Freedom 

Consistent with God's Sovereignty, 273 

CHAPTER X. 

Redemption in Relation to the Heathen and Those Incapable of 

Faith, 285 

CHAPTER XL 
Sin — Atonement — Pardon — Restoration, ...... 294 



PART III. 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Genius of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, • • . 310 



CHAPTER I. 

REASONS FOR THE VOLUME HEREIN OFFERED TO THE 

READING PUBLIC. 

The inquiry after truth and the belief of truth is the sovereign good of 
human nature. — Bacon. 

^npHB Cumberland Presbyterian Church, like the spiritual 
kingdom of which it is a humble branch, came not with 
imposing display. In the year 1810, in a plain rural dwelling in 
Dickson county, Tennessee, it was instrumentally set up by 
three devoted and godly ministers. From its inception until 
the present, its course has been a remarkable progress ; but it 
has gone forward with silent rather than with resounding steps. 
Its ministers have been laborious toilers in the field, not makers 
of books. Our literature is notably meager, and has no circula- 
tion beyond our own people. Hence it is not a just ground of 
wonder or complaint that, while God is doubtless our father, 
other branches of Abraham's great family are ignorant of us, 
and that the writers of histories in Israel acknowledge us not. 
As a denomination we have been singularly, if not culpably, 
indifferent to the obligation to bring our doctrines and our work 
more fully before the Christian public, and to this conviction, 
deep, long cherished, and intensified by many facts which have 
come to the personal knowledge of the author, the pages which 
follow are to be attributed. 

" I suppose your Church is very numerous about Cumber- 
land?" 

"Not at all," I replied. " In fact, I do not know that we have 
a congregation in the State of Maryland." 

" Is it possible ! Why, did your Church not originate about 
Cumberland?" 

(1) 



2 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

''By no means — we originated in Tennessee." 

" How, then, did you get your name? " 

This fragment of a conversation with a minister to whom I 
was introduced in my first field of labor indicates not only that 
even ministers in other great communions know but little of us, 
but also that it is a disadvantage to wear a name entirely devoid 
of significance as to doctrine, and to only a few persons indica- 
tive of even our geographical origin. 

In illustration of the erroneous opinions prevalent in respect 
to our doctrinal views, it is in place to cite a passage from the 
Philosophy of Sectarianism, by Rev. Alexander Blaikie, of Bos- 
ton. As the imprint of the book is 1855, it might be difficult at 
this date to ascertain the sources of his information — if he had 
any. Having noticed other Presbyterian Churches, he proceeds 
to say: " We have then the Cumberland Presbyterians, originat- 
ing from the irregular conduct of a Presbytery of that name, 
which, in 1803, introduced some fatal doctrinal errors ; and 
appealing from the Synod of Kentucky, to which it had been 
subordinate, its doings were condemned in 18 10, when it pro- 
claimed itself an independent Church. Not only holding some 
tenets gratifying to natural men, but also employing in its min- 
istry men of a less acquaintance with science, the languages, and 
theology, than other portions of the Presbyterian Church, it has 
grown rapidly." 

This language seems to indicate that its author believed our 
rapid growth attributable to " some fatal doctrinal errors," 
" some tenets gratifying to natural men," and an illiterate min- 
istry, while we have been wont to attribute it to the L,ord's 
blessing upon a faithful exhibition of the word he has ordained 
as the " infallible rule of faith and practice ; " and if the chapters 
that follow contribute to a better understanding, on the part of 
members of other denominations, of our faith and spirit, one 
of the aims in their preparation will have been secured. 

Unity of faith is at once a powerful bond, a condition of peace, 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. n 

and a source of denominational strength. If our membership, 
now exceeding one hundred and sixty thousand, can be more 
generally enlisted in reading plain expositions of the funda- 
mental principles of our holy religion, most valuable results 
will be realized in a higher type of individual Christian life, 
and in our enlarged usefulness as a Church. To this end it is 
desirable that the number of our books be multiplied as speedily 
as possible, and all the more so because the pulpit ministrations 
of to-day are, as a rule, quite barren of doctrinal exposition. 

There is among the Churches of this country a growing dispo- 
sition to lay aside those strifes over doctrinal differences which 
in the past have occasioned much waste of energy and provoked 
feelings quite at war with a true Christian spirit. If now these 
Churches will sit down to the task of an impartial examination 
of one another's standards, it may result that the differences 
will be seen to be so much fewer, and of so much less impor- 
tance than they were hitherto thought, as to bring about kinder 
fraternal sympathy, and helpful adjustment and co-operation in 
work, among numerous branches that in all essential doctrines 
have a like precious faith. The vast work now challenging the 
utmost energies of the Churches of America seems to demand 
such a movement as will most efficiently mass their forces 
against the common foe, and we are confident that, in the event 
of such a movement, Cumberland Presbyterians will be ready 
for what seems for the glory of the Master and the promotion 
of his kingdom. 

It is with no purpose of an uncharitable attack upon other 
creeds that this exposition of our own is sent forth. Compari- 
sons will be made, to show differences as well as agreements ; 
and as the Confession of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church — 
as indeed the Church itself — is a protest against what are called 
the severer features of Calvinism, to note specially our depart- 
ures from the Westminster Confession will be helpful in defining 
our doctrinal system. The earnest debate over those stern feat- 



4 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

ures of Calvinism— at this very hour engaging the profoundest 
learning and logic of the mother Church— seems to render the 
present a time peculiarly suitable for such a publication as is 
proposed, since, as the sequel will show, the vicious theology 
now so perplexing the mother Church our fathers saw and 
purged away at the beginning of the century. 

Our Church owes to itself and the public a manifest obliga- 
tion to aid in the production of a healthful current literature. 
With its 2,776 congregations, its 1,646 ordained ministers, its 
membership of 163,216, its numerous literary institutions, and 
its theological seminary, the Church has done and is doing com- 
paratively little to furnish the periodicals and books demanded 
by the great reading public, and thus comparatively little to 
shape the great currents of contemporary thought. From the 
whole body, therefore, should come a cordial and liberal re- 
sponse to the important step on the part of our Board of Publi- 
cation to throw upon the mind of the Church and upon the 
reading public generally a series of books setting forth the sys- 
tem of doctrine through which as a denomination we have 
received singular blessing and enlargement. 

For reasons herein given, and for more general ones to be 
stated in the next chapter, when recently the writer was re- 
quested by the Board of Publication of his Church to contrib- 
ute a volume to a series it is now issuing, the subject of this 
effort at once occurred to him as the one he could discuss with 
the most hope of some useful service to the cause of truth. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 



CHAPTER II. 

RELATION OF DOCTRINE TO DUTY AND DESTINY. 

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free. — John viii. 32. 

No error can be more pernicious or more absurd than that which repre- 
sents it as a matter of but little consequence what a man's opinions are ; 
for there is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth 
and holiness ; otherwise it would be of no consequence to discover truth 
or to embrace it. Our Savior has said, "A corrupt tree can not bring forth 
good fruit." — Introduction to Cumberland Presbyterian Confession of 
Faith. 

God and truth are always on the same side. — Theo. Parker. 

TN strict use of language, one's creed is that which he be- 
lieves; his doctrine, that which he teaches. As a candid 
man's teaching is also his belief, "creed" and ''doctrine" are 
with him one and the same thing. In a technical sense a creed 
is a summary of Christian belief. The creed, or confession of 
faith, of a Church embodies the summary of principles the 
Church professes to believe and to teach ; and hence creed and 
doctrine may be used as synonyms, as hereafter in these pages. 
Zoroaster, the Persian philosopher and the founder of Parsee- 
ism, is credited with sa}dng: "Taking the first footstep with a 
good thought, the second with a good word, and the third with 
a good deed, I entered Paradise." The beginning of his career 
was a good thought, its end Paradise. It was because the begin- 
ning was a good thought that the end was Paradise. The insep- 
arable connection between creed and conduct, principle and 
practice, doctrine and destiny is solemnly affirmed by conscious- 
ness, observation, and the word of God. "As a man thinketh in 
his heart, so is he." "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth 



6 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

shall make you free," declared the Great Teacher who came to 
speak to the world the words which the Father gave to him. So 
far as a creed embodies error, be it a social, political, moral, or 
religious creed, it will be vicious in its issues. Only upon truth 
can rest the well-being of rational creatures. Only out of truth 
can come the harmony of the universe. Hence the vast impor- 
tance and the responsibility, whether it pertain to an individual 
or a Church, of formulating a summary of principles to be 
believed, practiced, and taught. Believers are " chosen to sal- 
vation, through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the 
truth." What God hath joined together in the process of the 
soul's salvation let us be careful that our "creeds" do not put 
asunder. 

In every soul there is capacity for a true life — a life that opens 
godward, that fits its possessor for the presence in which there 
is fullness of joy. How is that susceptibility awakened into 
activity in the true spiritual evolution ? Through the quicken- 
ing power of the Spirit it is made capable of upward impulses 
from the apprehension of the truth, but these initial processes 
and the subsequent daily renewal of the inner man are in har- 
mony with psychological laws. The soul, spiritually quickened, 
holding under survey the various impulses to action, chooses as 
its supreme end, because of a perceived obligation, the law and 
the service of its God. Truth believed begets sense of obliga- 
tion, obligation felt begets volition, volition issues in action, 
action repeated begets habit, habits aggregated constitute char- 
acter, character determines destiny. 

But the soul which has chosen salvation through Christ, and 
the commandments of Christ as the law of its conduct, starts 
upon its career but a babe in Christ, and hence needs the means 
of developing, strengthening, training, perfecting its powers. 
To such the direction is, " Desire the sincere milk of the word, 
that you may grow thereby." For such Christ prays the Father, 
"Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." It is 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 7 

truth apprehended, truth received by faith, truth digested by 
reflection, and assimilated by daily observance as a principle of 
action, that is " profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, 
for instruction in righteousness," so that thereby "the man of 
God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 
Simply to believe the truth is not enough. Devils believe, but 
are devils still. It is by embracing the truth as good, by doing 
it, by looking into it as into a mirror, that, " beholding therein 
the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, from 
glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." " Divine 
truth exerts upon the mind," says Caird, "at once a restorative 
and a self-manifesting power. As light opens the close-shut 
flower-bud to receive light, so the truth of God, shining on the 
soul, quickens and stirs into activity the faculty by which that 
very truth is perceived." 

In the introduction to his valuable compend, Theology Con- 
densed, Rev. T. C. Blake, D.D., well urges that theology should 
be taught as any other science is taught, and that " parents owe 
it to themselves and to their children to have in their own 
houses such helps as will enable them and their offspring to 
form correct conceptions of God and of the plan of salvation 
which he has revealed." In this effort to present briefly the 
relation of doctrinal soundness to a life of godliness here, and to 
man's eternal well-being hereafter, the writer must record his 
regret that on the part of professing Christians generally there 
seems to be so little disposition to read and ponder works setting 
forth the vital truths of our holy religion. Not only does the 
study of moral and spiritual truth lay the granite foundation for 
that character which infinitely outvalues all perishable treasure, 
it also imparts the strength, piety, stability, and vigorous activity 
which should characterize the Church of Jesus Christ. If 
"ignorance is the curse of God," indifference to the truth is a 
paralysis of our moral and spiritual powers. In this realm of 
knowledge especially "God and truth are always on the same 



8 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

side," and that truth is the strait gate into the narrow way lead- 
ing up to heaven, and immortality, and God. 

Having penned the paragraphs of this chapter in hope of con- 
tributing something to awaken interest in the study of those 
words which are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, 
and purified seven times, the writer can be pardoned for record- 
ing his grateful recollection that in his youthful days Abbott's 
Corner Stone of Religious Truth, The Pilgrim 's Progress, The 
Saints' Rest, Nelson's Cause a?id Cure of Infidelity, and other 
religious works, afforded mental food which he devoured with 
eager relish, when " sensational literature," which had already 
begun to teem from the press, and has since become multitudi- 
nous as the locusts of Egypt, was either unknown to him or 
beyond his ability to procure. 

If our people will encourage the present effort of the Board 
of Publication to engage the pens of the Church for the produc- 
tion of a sound theological literature, the result will be most 
fruitful of good. It has been well said that religion is subject- 
ive theology — the exemplification in the experience and the life 
of the light and power of the truths of religion clearly appre- 
hended, believed, and obeyed. To all the other methods of 
work of the Christian Church, books are an aid of the greatest 
value, in their religious bearing as well as in other respects justi- 
fying the sentiment of Bartholin, that " without books God is 
silent, justice dormant, science at a stand, philosophy lame, 
letters dumb, and all things involved in Cimmerian darkness." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 9 



CHAPTER III. 

OF THE SCRIPTURES AND THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT 

OF THEIR MEANING, AND THE USE AND 

ABUSE OF CREEDS. 

Truth is the daughter of time. — Aulus Gellius. 

* J ^HK volume received as the word of God is made up of 
sixty-six distinct books, and its authorship is attributed to 
over thirty writers. From the production of the first to the pro- 
duction of the last of these books there intervenes a period of 
nearly two thousand years. Some of the books are historical, 
some devotional, some prophetic. Though all are inspired, yet 
each receives a coloring from its author's mental peculiarities, 
and from the customs of the people, from the morals, the civil 
institutions, and the philosophy of its own age. Some of the 
subjects discussed are of .such a character that their complete 
comprehension transcends the human mind, and the entire 
course of events revealed therein stretches from the creation of 
the heavens and the earth to the end of man's probationary 
career. Besides, this book is God's revelation for all the ages, 
and many of the " things yet to come" of which it speaks will 
not be understood until the race shall look upon them in the 
light of their own unfolding. 

Such being the character of the Bible, it is not remarkable 
that men of equal candor, erudition, and piety differ, and differ 
widely, in their interpretation of its teachings. It would be 
much more remarkable if they did not differ. This is apparent 
when we consider that we arrive at the meaning of the Script- 



IO DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

tires as we arrive at the meaning of other books, by faithful 
study and the comparison of part with part. The Great Teacher 
commanded, "Search the Scriptures," and the inspired word 
itself declares that in Paul's Epistles " are some things hard to 
be understood," and that these difficult passages the unlearned 
and unstable not only do not understand, but "wrest unto their 
own destruction." One can so interpret the world about him as 
to be a morose pessimist ; and one may so wrest the teachings 
of the word of God as to justify a wicked life — as we have 
known men to do. Whoever will read the Bible with a reverent 
mind, seeking the Spirit's guidance, will undoubtedly so far 
understand it that it will be made to him the power of God unto 
salvation. Utterly unreasonable are those who put aside the 
whole question as to the claims of the Bible by saying to Chris- 
tians, " Why, you can not yourselves agree what it means ! " In 
all the sciences and in all the arts men differ in their views ; and 
yet the sciences contain truth, and the arts are useful. The 
Bible is not contradictory in its teachings ; but man's judgment 
is fallible. In the study of the Bible we see what we bring the 
power to see, and no more. As constitutional peculiarities and 
the customs of his times give coloring to the writings of every 
inspired author, it is likewise true that every individual student 
of the word will see it, in a greater or less degree, in coloring 
reflected upon its pages from his own mental idiosyncrasies, the 
education he has received, his system of metaphysics, and the 
preconceived theological views with which he sits down to the 
study of the word. In every department of study men differ, 
and none differ more widely than those justly esteemed the 
world's great thinkers. It is related that an Englishman desired 
to introduce his son, then an Oxford student, to the two greatest 
living thinkers, as he esteemed them — Carlyle and Herbert 
Spencer. Upon the close of the interview with Spencer the 
father remarked that it was his purpose to take his son to see 
Carlyle also, whereupon Mr. Spencer exclaimed : "Ah, Mr. Car- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 1 

lyle ! I am afraid he has done more to propagate error than any 
other writer of the century." Upon the close of the interview 
with Carlyle the father remarked : " This will be a day for my 
hoy to look back upon, Mr. Carlyle, for in it he has been intro- 
duced to two great men — yourself and Herbert Spencer;" 
whereupon Carlyle exclaimed : " Herbert Spencer ! Herbert 
Spencer! an im-measur-able fool!" Yet were both these men 
great thinkers, each, in his sphere, seeing some truths more 
clearly than any predecessor had seen them, each contributing 
something to the general stock of knowledge. 

The interpretation of the word of God, equally with the inter- 
pretation of the works of God, has been progressive. Newton 
knew more about the heavens than did Galileo, and the astrono- 
mers of to-day know vastly more than Newton knew ; and we 
are constrained to believe that the sum of astronomical knowl- 
edge will yet be vastly increased. Similarly, we must believe 
that the concurrent theological thought of to-day more nearly 
represents the true meaning of the Bible than did the thought 
of any preceding age. And the advance in biblical interpreta- 
tion comes much as does the advance of our knowledge of the 
world in which we live, in the science of government or of 
morals, and that is through the service rendered by those supe- 
rior minds seemingly sent to guide the race up to greater heights 
of knowledge and improvement. To the interpretation of the 
Bible, the establishment of the Church, and the progress of 
Christian civilization, we may aptly apply the declaration of Car- 
lyle, that " universal history, the history of what man has accom- 
plished in this world, is at the bottom the history of the great 
men who have worked here ; " and that all " things we see stand- 
ing in this world are, properly, the outward material result — the 
practical realization and embodiment of thoughts which dwelt 
in the great men sent into the world." The idea that these 
great leaders may be divinely sent, to be the guides of the race 
in its march through and out of the wilderness of ignorance, 



12 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

seemed to impress the mind of Carlyle even, for he said : " The 
great man is the ' creature of Time,' they say ; the Time called 
him forth ; the Time did every thing ; he nothing but what we, 
the little critic, could have done too! This seems to me but 
melancholy work. The Time calls him forth ? Alas, we have 
known the Times call loudly enough for their great man, but 
not find him when they called I He was not there ! Providence 
had not sent him ; the Time calling its loudest had to go down 
to confusion and wreck, because he would not come when 
called." It is not more true in aught than in religion and in 
scriptural interpretation that one extreme begets another. A 
great mind set for the work of exposing and destro3'ing a doc- 
trinal heresy is liable to run into an extreme opposite the one he 
fights, as the history of theological opinions will show. Yet, 
upon the whole, there is progress ; and we may not unreasonably 
indulge the belief that the great multiplication of facilities for 
the study of the sacred word, and the vastly increased number 
of competent critics now devotedly giving their erudition and 
their powers of logic to the investigation of that word, will 
gradually wear away the differences of doctrinal belief which 
now divide the Church into sects. The great work now before 
the Churches of this country, and their solemn responsibility in 
view of it, demand, as it seems to me, that they candidly con- 
sider, and at once, whether in many instances alleged doctrinal 
differences are not entirely too unimportant to justify the divis- 
ion they occasioned and still perpetuate, and whether because of 
these divisions there is not great waste of spiritual energ}^ and 
of material agencies, both so greatly needed in the solution of 
the problem of the evangelization of the rapidly increasing num- 
bers who never enter our places of worship. 

As declared in the introduction to the Confession of Faith of 
the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, " the right of private 
judgment, in respect to religion, is inalienable." To search the 
Scriptures for himself is alike the right and the duty of every 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 13 

man who has the opportunity. No pope or council or creed can 
bind the conscience in this respect. Only the word of God is 
the rule of faith and practice, and it is such to every man in the 
sense in which he understands it through an honest effort to 
arrive at its meaning. This doctrine, common to Protestanism, 
is the key to progress in the interpretation of the Scriptures. 
To give it up is to go back to the spiritual bondage of the mid- 
dle ages. The division and sub-division of Churches is prefer- 
able to the spiritual death in which men repose unquestioning 
faith in the opinions of a fallible man or a council of fallible 
men. A written creed, therefore, while it serves for a time a 
most important end, may become a most serious hindrance to 
the progress of truth, a very paralysis on the Church of which 
it is the bond of faith and practice. To say that any creed shall 
for all time express the faith of a Church is to claim that the 
creed is infallible, or that the Church holding it is incapable of 
progress. As a great thinker has said, if an oak be planted in an 
urn, the urn must break or the oak must die — a fact illustrated 
again and again in the history of the Christian Church. A creed 
is but a temporary halting place in the march of mind, indicat- 
ing a position in advance of any previously reached ; but knowl- 
edge multiplies, and directly the creed is out of harmony with 
the current of advanced thought, and unrest and agitation result 
in the revision of the creed or a secession that sets up a new 
one. The truths here hinted at in an imperfect wa}^ seem to me 
of the utmost importance, and to justify the insertion of the fol- 
lowing excellent passage from Bishop Butler : 

"And as it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet 
understood, so, if ever it comes to be understood, it must be in 
the same way as natural knowledge is come at — by the continu- 
ance and progress of learning and libert3^, and by particular per- 
sons attending to, comparing, and pursuing intimations scattered 
up and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the 
generality of the world. Nor is it at all incredible that a book 



14 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

which has been so long in the possession of mankind should 
contain many truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same 
phenomena, and the same faculties of investigation, from which 
such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in 
the present and last age were equally in the possession of man- 
kind several thousand years before." 

The following passage from the farewell address to the Plym- 
outh Pilgrims, by their pastor, Rev. John Robinson, sets in so 
clear a light the true spirit of the consistent student of God's 
word that I am confident the reader will be glad that it is here 
reproduced : 

" Brethren, we are now quickly to part from one another, and 
whether I may live to ever see your face on earth any more, the 
God of heaven only knows; but whether the Lord hath 
appointed that or no, I charge you before God and his blessed 
angels that you follow me no farther than you have seen me fol- 
low the Lord Jesus Christ. 

" If God reveal any thing to you by any other instrument of 
his, be as ready to receive it as ever } t ou were to receive any 
truth by my ministry; for I am verily persuaded, I am very 
confident, the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his 
Holy Word. For my part I can not sufficiently bewail the con- 
dition of the Reformed Churches, who are come to a period in 
religion, and will go at present no farther than the instruments 
of their Reformation. The Lutherans can't be drawn to go 
beyond what Luther saw ; whatever part of his will our good 
God has revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. 
And the Calvinists, y§M see, stick fast where they were left by 
that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. 

" This is a misery much to be lamented, for though they were 
burning and shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated 
not into the whole counsel of God ; but were they now living 
would be as willing to embrace further light as that which they 
first received. I beseech you to remember it, 't is an article of 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 15 

your Church, covenant, that you be ready to receive whatever 
truth shall be made known to you from the written word of God. 
Remember that and every other article of your sacred covenant. 
But I must here exhort you to take heed what you receive as 
truth. Examine it, consider it, and compare it with other 
scriptures of truth before you receive it, for 'tis not possible 
the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick anti- 
Christian darkness, and that perfection of knowledge should 
break forth at once." — NeaPs History of New England. 

"It is evident," says Dr. Edwards A. Park in his " Duties of a 
Theologian," "that theology has been obviously improving 
within the last two centuries ; and the comparison between the 
standard systems of the present day and those of Turretin, 
Ridgely, or Owen presents a rich earnest of what is to come. All 
these improvements have given and all future improvements 
will give new power to the essential doctrines of Jesus." I 
truly believe, as Dr. Park elsewhere adds, that " both the Testa- 
ments are more accurately interpreted at the present day than 
they have ever been since the days of John, the last of the uner- 
ring expositors;" to which ma}^ be added the expectant declara- 
tion of another equally distinguished critic, who says : "The 
time is coming (I can not doubt it) when all the dark places 
of the Bible will be elucidated to the satisfaction of intelligent 
and humble Christians. But how near at hand that blessed day 
is I do not know. ' The Lord hasten it in its time ! ' " In the 
same line of thought the following excellent words of Professor 
Shedd, author of History of Christian Docti'ine, seem to indicate 
a hopeful expectancy of a convergence of the views of intelli- 
gent Christians in all evangelical branches of Protestantism, and 
the near approach of the better day when our great theological 
warriors will unitedly turn against the common foes of our holy 
religion the weapons hitherto employed for mutual overthrow : 
"All doctrinal history evinces," says Professor Shedd, "that 
just in proportion as evangelical believers come to possess a 



1 6 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

common scientific talent for expressing their common faith and 
feeling, they draw nearer together so far as regards their sym- 
bolic literature. While on the contrary a slender power of self- 
reflection and analysis, together with a loose use of terms, drives 
minds far apart within the sphere of theology who often melt 
and flow together within the sphere of Christian feeling and 
effort. Science unites and unifies wherever it prevails ; for sci- 
ence is accuracy in terms, definitions, and statements." " Prob- 
ably nothing in the way of means," adds the same writer, 
" would do more to bring about that universal unity in doctrinal 
statement which has been floating as an ideal before the minds 
of men amidst the denominational distractions of Protestantism 
than a thorough and general acquaintance with the symbols of 
the various denominations, and the history of their origin and 
formation." 

The careful study of the influence of creeds in their relation 
to the progress of the interpretation of the Scriptures, and the 
history of Protestant Christianity will lead, we think, to the fol- 
lowing conclusions : 

i . That creeds are useful as depositories of the results of true 
progress in the interpretation of the Bible, treasuring the fruits 
of investigation by a master mind, or of an epoch of general 
quickening of thought. 

2. As necessary to founding and perpetuating organizations 
by assimilating great numbers in faith and practice. We see, 
indeed, bodies of Christian believers who have no written creed, 
and for that very reason claiming to be par excellence Churches 
of Christ, as receiving only the Bible as their creed; but in 
these there is always an understood interpretation of the Script- 
ures, descending even to the detail of mode of baptism, which 
must be subscribed as a condition of fellowship. So it may be 
that there is most a creed where it is claimed there is no creed. 

3. They are useful as tending to unify Christian belief, on the 
whole, by fixing definitely the meaning of theological phrases 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 17 

and statements, whereby the means of comparison of views is 
furnished to the whole Church. " On all sides and for all 
minds," says Dr. Shedd, " more light would be poured upon the 
profound mysteries of a common evangelical Christianity, if the- 
ologians were in the habit of looking over the whole field of 
symbolic literature instead of merely confining themselves to 
the examination of a single system." 

4. That creeds are harmful when they are so received as to 
discourage instead of promoting the study of God's word, and 
especially when put in the place of the only infallible standard, 
thus leading those who subscribe them to trust in man instead 
of God. If it was wrong for one to say, " I am of Paul," and 
another to say, " I am of Apollos," much more must it be wrong 
for one Christian of to-day to declare himself of Calvin and 
another to declare himself of Luther as to authority for their 
doctrinal views. Like the noble Bereans, the subscribers of all 
creeds should " search the Scriptures " to see whether these 
creeds speak according to the living oracles. 

5. Creeds to be subscribed by the laity should be plain, brief 
summaries of only the essential doctrines of Scripture. For can- 
didates for ordination, subscription to fuller formulas may be 
necessary in order to unity of doctrinal teaching in the pulpits 
of a denomination. 

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church is fortunate in having 
but a brief creed. After a cursory view of it the learned Dr. 
Nelson, late of Lane Theological Seminary, said to the writer : 
" I see you have the advantage of us in one respect — you have 
less Confession of Faith ; and if I had my way ours would be 
less still — there is no need of so much book." 

A correspondent of The Church Union suggests this brief 
creed as a scriptural basis of Christian unity : 

Doctrine.—" I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." 
Practice.—" If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we 
have fellowship one with another" 



1 8 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



CHAPTER IV. 

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LEADING CREEDS OF THE 
CHRISTIAN WORLD. 

" He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and 
the Son." 

TT seems desirable to introduce here, as required by logical 
continuity of our subject, a brief notice of the leading 
CREEDS of the Christian world, with such a general classification 
of them as may be interesting to the ordinary reader. 

In his reply to the question of his divine Master, " But whom 
say ye that I am?" the Apostle Peter made a confession which 
seems entitled to the distinction of being regarded the first 
formal "confession of faith" under the Christian dispensation: 
" Thou art the Christ \ the Son of the living God." Whatever 
may be true in regard to the import of Christ's reply — whether 
the " rock " on which he said he would build his Church is 
Peter, or Peter's confession, or Christ himself — it is pertinent to 
notice that the confession of Peter recognizes Christ as the true 
Messiah and truly divine. As Lange observes : " It is a con- 
fession of Jesus Christ as the center and heart of the whole 
Christian system, and the only and all-sufficient fountain of spir- 
itual life — as a true man and the promised Messiah, and as the 
eternal Son of God, hence as the God-Man and Savior of the 
world." It is not unsuitable to remark, in passing, that what- 
ever be the import of the words of Christ conferring on Peter 
power to bind and loose in heaven (the Church), subsequently 
the same language (Matt, xviii. 18) was addressed to all the 
apostles ; and that, as remarked by Rev. David Brown, D.D., in 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 19 

his commentary on the passage, " not in all the New Testament 
is there the vestige of any authority either claimed or exercised 
by Peter, or conceded to him, above the rest of the apostles — a 
thing conclusive against the Romish claims in behalf of that 
apostle." 

Peter's open confession of faith in Christ as the Son of the liv- 
ing God, in his nature, his mission, his work, is the true door of 
admittance to the Church of Christ and the test of the funda- 
mental orthodoxy of all subsequently formed creeds, as embrac- 
ing the central idea, and life, and power of the gospel. As the 
sun in the solar system, so is the central truth divinely revealed 
to Peter, in its relation to all evangelical creeds, as is most sug- 
gestively illustrated in their contents — Christ " the way, the 
truth, and the life." 

It is sufficient for our present purpose to classify creeds as 
those formed before and those formed after what is known as 
the Reformation, an event justly regarded a great dividing line 
in the history of the Christian Church. 

A. — Creeds Formed Before the Reformation. 

The confession of Peter seems to have been repeated by the 
early converts to Christianity upon their admission to the 
Church by the rite of baptism, as in the case of the eunuch bap- 
tized by Philip, whose solemn asseveration was, " I believe that 
Jesus Christ is the Son of God." (Acts viii. 37.) As com- 
manded, the apostles baptized " into the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; " and this of necessity 
involved the convert's implied, if not a formally declared, con- 
fession of the doctrine of the Trinity, giving a second element 
in the faith on which primitive converts were baptized. Some 
writers upon the subject regard 1 Tim. iii. 16 as a "creed-form » 
current at the time it was penned, but it lacks formal confession 
of the Trinity, though the Trinitv is implied in the summary of 
the person and mediatorial work of Christ. From these begin- 



20 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

nings, through stages not now known, there was formed at a 
very early date what is known to the Christian world as 

i. The Apostles' Creed. 

Of this venerable creed Luther says : " This confession of 
faith we did not make or invent, nor did the fathers before us ; 
but as a bee collects honey from the beautiful and fragrant flow- 
ers of all sorts, so is this symbol briefly and accurately put 

together out of the books of the prophets and apostles 

And it has been in the Church from the beginning, since it was 
either composed by the apostles themselves or else brought 
together from their writings or preaching by some of their best 
pupils." Rufinus affirmed his belief at the end of the fourth 
century that it was made up of contributions from each one of 
the apostles, as the Greek word giving name to it {pufifiolov) 
signifies "thrown in." The Latin title is Symbolum Apostolicum, 
and the first word of the symbol being credo, thence has come 
the ecclesiastical "creed." The more general belief is that it 
was made up from the formulas used by individual Churches, 
and that by common consent it had by the close of the second 
century come into general use as a formula for admitting into 
Church fellowship. By order of the English Parliament it was 
appended to the first authorized edition of the Shorter Cate- 
chism. This ancient creed, which, without modification, has 
been for seventeen centuries the symbol of the faith of those 
claiming one Father, one Savior, and one hope of life eternal, is 
here given in the version accepted by all English-speaking 
Christendom : 

7 believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and 
earth; and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was con- 
ceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under 
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into 
hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended 
into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 21 

Almighty ; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the 
dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost ; the Holy Catholic Church; 
the communio7i of saints ; the forgiveness of sins ; the resurrec- 
tion of the body ; and the life everlasting. 

As there were in those early days only manuscript copies of 
the Bible, and these in the hands of very few, it is a reasonable 
supposition that the Apostles' Creed was generally memorized 
and frequently repeated. Thus this symbol comes to us, not 
only invested with the charm of antiquity, but with the hallowed 
association of having been on the lips of a vast multitude who 
have dropped their bodies on the shore of life's unresting sea ! 

As another index of the faith of the earlier days of Chris- 
tianity, and as showing the agreement of the general teaching 
with the Apostles' Creed, the following is cited from a work 
of Tertullian, belonging to the end of the second century : 

"The rule of faith is one only, unchangeable, and not to be 
amended, namely, the belief in one sole omnipotent God, the 
maker of the world ; and in his Son Jesus Christ, born of the 
Virgin Mar}^, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised from the 
dead on the third day, received into heaven, seated now on 
the right hand of the Father, and to come hereafter to judge 
the living and the dead, through the resurrection of the flesh." 

2. The Nicene Creed. (A.D. 325-569.) 

The circumstances giving rise to this creed are also the key to 
its doctrinal structure, and show how the Church has frequently 
found it necessary to expand a creed already in use. It contains 
a fuller statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, as the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, an addition made necessary by 
the fact that heretical teachers sprang up who professed faith in 
a trinity, but denied the divinity of Christ and of the Holy 
Ghost. These teachers claimed, moreover, that they put on the 
Apostles' Creed the true construction, as also on the Scriptures. 
Hence, as Professor Shedd observes, this "symbol introduces 



22 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

scientific conceptions and technical terms, in order to preclude 
that possibility of two interpretations of language which was 
connected with the earlier symbol." The part of the creed 
relating to the divinity of Christ was formulated by a general 
council held in Nice, Bithynia, A.D. 325 ; the part relating to the 
divinity and personality of the Holy Ghost was added by a gen- 
eral council held at Constantinople, A.D. 381 ; and the part 
beginning with " filioque," supplied by a general council of the 
Latin Church at Toledo, Spain, A.D. 569. This creed was 
received by both the Greek and the Latin Churches, the former 
rejecting the last added part, and in modern times is, as Professor 
Shedd affirms, " the received creed-statement of all trinitarian 
Churches." By this ancient confession also, as by the Apostles' 
Creed, are we reminded of the essential unity and the unchange- 
ableness of Christian faith in its fundamental elements. Sys- 
tems of philosophy rise, flourish, and pass away ; one system of 
government gives place to another, but the faith of God's peo- 
ple, like the word of the Lord on which it is founded, changes 
not. In its usual English dress the Nicene, or Nic<zno-Constanti- 
nopolitan Symbol, is as follows : 

" I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, and all 
things visible and invisible ; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the 
only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father, before 
all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very 
God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the 
Father, by whom all things were made ; who, for us men and 
for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by 
the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and 
was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and 
was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the 
Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right 
hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to 
judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have 
no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord the Giver 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 23 

of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with 
the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; 
who spake by the prophets. And I believe in one Catholic and 
Apostolic Church ; I acknowledge one baptism for the remission 
of sins ; and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life 
of the world to come." 

Subsequent to the promulgation of the Nicene Creed there 
sprang up the heresy known as Nestorianism, which teaches 
that the human and the divine natures of Christ constitute two 
persons ; to correct which a council held at Kphesus, A.D. 431, 
formulated the true doctrine of the two natures in one person. 
An opposite extreme taught that the two natures in Christ's per- 
son formed but one nature, which was condemned by a deliver- 
ance of the council of Chalcedon ; and these two councils for- 
mulated the doctrine since received by the Christian world, of 
two natures in the one person of the Son of God. This creed is 
usually styled — 

3. The Chalcedon Symbol. (A.D. 451.) 

At this halting-place the Church has stood ever since. " The 
theological mind has net ventured beyond the positions estab- 
lished at this time, respecting the structure and composition of 
Christ's most mysterious person — a subject in some respects 
more baffling to speculation than that of the Trinity proper." — 
Professor Shedd. 

4. The Athanasian Creed. (Symbolum Quicumque) 

"This creed," says Dr. A. A. Hodge, in his Commentary on 
the Westminster Confession, "was evidently composed long 
after the death of the great theologian whose name it bears, and 
after the controversies closed and the definitions established by 
the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. It is a grand and 
unique monument of the unchangeable faith of the whole 
Church as to the great mysteries of godliness, the Trinity of 
persons in the one God and the duality of natures in the one 
Christ." "It was drawn up," says Dr. Shedd, "in order to fur- 



24 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

nish a symbol that would be received by both the Eastern and 

Western Churches It is most probable it originated in 

the school of Augustine and Hilary, whose trinitarianism it em- 
bodies." 

Comparing these great creeds, beginning with the confession 
of the candidate for baptism, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the living God," and coming on to this last, which brings us to 
the twilight of the Reformation, we see how in all of them there 
is imbedded a clear and unchangeable faith in the divinity of 
Christ, not less certainly than there are rocky strata in the crust 
of the earth — the element of faith essential to the great hope of 
humanity, that Jesus has power to forgive sins, and to give 
eternal life to all who believe upon him. 

From the Athanasian creed that portion relating to the person 
of Christ is here given : 

" 27. But it is necessary to eternal salvation that he should 
also faithfully believe in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 28. It is therefore true faith that we believe and confess 
that our Lord Jesus Christ is both God and man. 29. He is 
God ; generated from eternity from the substance of the Father ; 
man born in time from the substance of his mother. 30. Perfect 
God, perfect man, subsisting of a rational soul and human 
flesh. 31. Equal to the Father in respect to his divinity, less 
than the Father in respect to his humanity. 32. Who, although 
he is God and man, is not two, but one Christ. 33. But two not 
from the conversion of divinity into flesh, but from the assump- 
tion of his humanity into God. 34. One not at all from the con- 
fusion of substance, but from unity of person. 35. For as 
rational soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one 
Christ." 

We pass now a long interval which closed with the great tran- 
sition event in the history of the Church, called the Reforma- 
tion. A new birth of Christendom was to come — and was sadly 
needed. " The Lord's vineyard was a desert. The priesthood 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 25 

was grown worldly and even dissolute. The popes, overstep- 
ping all limits in their assumptions, led lives horrible and scan- 
dalous beyond measure. Church assemblies seemed held only 
for the Bacchanalian orgies that went with them." In the sky 
of this moral and spiritual night appeared such stars as John of 
Milic, Wiclif, and Huss, and directly there burst forth a resplen- 
dent constellation of such men as the world has rarely seen. 
Out of their labors came the Protestant Reformation, and out of 
the emancipation of thought attending the Reformation came a 
large number of confessions of faith, which may be designated 

B. — Creeds Formed Since the Reformation. 

1. Ca?ions and Decrees of the Council of Trent. (A.D. 1545- 

1563-) 
A general synod, designed to counteract the progress of the 

Reformation, was called by Pope Paul, and met at Trent, Decem- 
ber, 1545, continuing its sessions, with intermission, nearly eight 
years. This synod issued the creed known as Cano?ies et Deer eta 
Concilii Tridentini. A papal bull of Pius IV. confirmed the 
canons and decrees, and " forbade, under severest penalties, all 
clergymen and laymen from making explanations upon them." 
The "decrees" contain the papal doctrine, and the " canons " 
explain the decrees, and condemn the opposite tenets of the 
Protestant Church — ending always with "anathema sit." 

A catechism explaining and enforcing the canons of the coun- 
cil of Trent was promulgated A.D. 1556, by authority of Pope 
Pius IV. 

In 1564 a bull of Pius IV. enjoined on all public teachers, all 
candidates for clerical or academical honors, and all converts 
from other Churches to subscribe the Tridentine Profession of 
Faith, which is made up of the Nicene Creed and the canons of 
the Tridentine S}'nod. 

The Papal Church has also the Catechism of Bellarmine (1603), 
the bull Unigenitus of Clement XI. (1711), the Confutation of 



26 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

the Confession of Augustine, the Mis sale Romanum, and the 
Breviarium Romanum, as " important auxiliary sources of the 
papal doctrine." 

2. Creeds of the Greek Church. 

The most important modern confession of the Greek Church 
is the Orthodox Confession drawn up in 1 642 by Peter Mogilas, 
bishop of Kiew, to counteract Protestantism, which was pub- 
lished in Russian, modern Greek, Latin, and German. The 
Confessio Dosithei was prepared by a Greek patriarch of Jerusa- 
lem, exposing the errors of the Calvinistic system. The Con- 
fessio Gemiadii was prepared at an earlier date (1453) by Genna- 
dius, patriarch of Constantinople, being a summary of the 
fundamental truths of the Christian religion. 

" This Church arrogates to herself pre-eminently the title of 
the ' orthodox,' because the original creeds denning the doctrine 
of the Trinity and the person of Christ were produced in the 
Eastern half of the ancient Church, and hence are in a peculiar 
sense her inheritance. Greek theology is very imperfectly 
developed beyond the ground covered by these ancient creeds, 
which that Church magnifies and maintains with singular tenac- 
ity."— Dr. A. A. Hodge. 

Founding its doctrinal system on the Apostles' Creed and the 
decisions of the seven general councils previous to the division 
into the Eastern (or Greek) and the Western (or Latin) Church, 
the Greek Church rejects the decisions of all Western councils 
since the schism. The Greek Church, like the Roman, is 
Arminian in theology. 

3. The Lutheran Creeds. 

Luther and Calvin showed themselves leaders of theological 
thought, and the impress of their minds remains in the two 
great branches of the Protestant world, the Lutheran and the 
Reformed Churches. " The Lutheran Church," as remarked by 
Professor Shedd, " adopted with decision the Patristic results in 
the departments of theology and christology. But the doctrines 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 27 

of sin and redemption had been left, to some extent, undevel- 
oped by the Patristic mind, and entirely without definite sym- 
bolic statement, and had been misstated by the papal mind at 
Trent ; and hence the principal part of the new and original 
work of the Lutheran divine was connected with these." In 
the year 1530 a confession previously prepared by Luther, Me- 
lanchthon, and two other divines was submitted to the imperial 
diet at Augsburg, and, with slight modifications, was adopted. 
First in time, promulgated by an imperial diet, most important 
of all Lutheran symbols is this 

(a) Augsburg Confession. (A.D. 1530.) 

Summoned to the undertaking by Charles V., the papal theo- 
logians prepared a critical examination of this Augsburg Con- 
fession, which was read in an imperial assembly in August, 1530, 
and was approved by Charles, who thereupon demanded that 
the Protestants return to the doctrines of the Papal Church. A 
copy of this document was refused the Protestants, but Melanch- 
thon, from notes taken by himself and others when it was read 
in the diet, prepared an able answer to the papal Confutaiio, as 
it was called, which answer the Protestants desired to present to 
Charles, who declared, however, that he would neither hear nor 
receive any more documents from the Protestants. From the 
first this document, called the Apology, was regarded as of great 
authority in doctrine, and in 1537 it was formally subscribed, at 
Smalcald, as a doctrinal symbol, and is generally designated 
(b) The Apology for the Augsburg Confession. (1530.) 
After these principal symbols Lutheran theologians recognize 
<i) The Larger and Smaller Catechisms, " the first for the use of 
preachers and teachers, the latter as a guide in the instruction 
of youth," prepared by Luther (1529). (2) The Articles of 
Smalcald, prepared by Luther in 1536, and subscribed formally 
the next year. (3) The Saxon Confession, prepared by Melanch- 
thon in 1551. (4) The Wurtemburg Confession, composed by 
Brenz in 1552, which, like the Saxon, was prepared for a council 



28 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

of Trent, both being copies of trie Augsburg Confession. (5) 
The Formula Concordice, drawn up in 1557 by Andrea and others. 
" It is a polemic document constructed by that part of the Luth- 
eran Church hostile to the Calvinistic theory of the sacraments. 
It carries the doctrine of consubstantiation into technical state- 
ment, teaching the presence of the divine nature of Christ in 
the sacramental elements." — Shedd. The High Lutherans re- 
ceive the Formula Concordice ; the moderate party reject it, 
" content to stand by the Augsburg Confession, the Apology, and 
the Smalcald Articles" 

4. Reformed (Calvinistic) Confessio?is. 

Under the title of "Reformed Churches" are embraced all 
the Churches of Germany subscribing the Heidelberg Catechism ; 
the Protestant Churches of Switzerland, France, Holland, Eng- 
land, and Scotland ; the Independents and Baptists of England 
and America; and the various branches of the Presbyterian 
Church in England and America. 

The Reformed Churches represent that element of the Refor- 
mation which came most fully out, so to speak, of bondage to 
papal traditions, and insisting most fully on the study of the 
word of the Lord as the privilege and duty of everj^ man. It is 
but a natural sequence that we have creeds many and Churches 
many, since theologians of this class went to work to determine 
anew the teachings of the word, to the study of which they gave 
themselves most earnestly. Passing by a number of confessions, 
having individual significance and some that were adopted by 
quite limited numbers of individual Churches, we have the fol- 
lowing list, which embraces the leading Reformed creeds : 

(a) The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. 

Drawn up originally in A.D. 1551 by Cranmer and Ridley,, 
they were, in 1562, reduced by the bishops to their present num- 
ber, at the order of Queen Elizabeth, and are the doctrinal 
standard of the Episcopal Churches in England, Scotland, Amer- 
ica, and the British colonies. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHUP.CH. 29 

(b) The Heidelberg Catechism. 

Prepared by Ursinus and Olerianus, A.D. 1562. "It was 
established by civil authority, the doctrinal standard, as well as 
instrument for the Churches of the Palatinate, a German State 
at that time including both banks of the Rhine. It is the Con- 
fession of Faith of the Reformed Churches of Germany and 
Holland, and of the German and (Dutch) Reformed Churches of 
America." — Dr. A. A. Hodge. 

(c) The Second Helvetic Confessio?i. (1564.) 

" It was adopted by all the Reformed Churches in Switzer- 
land with the exception of Basle, and by the Reformed Churches 
in Poland, Hungary, Scotland, and France." — Professor Shedd. 

(d) The Canons of the Synod of Dort. 

The synod of Dort (Holland) met in November, 16 18, and con- 
tinued its sessions until the next May. It was composed of 
sixty-eight Hollanders and twenty-eight foreign delegates, the 
latter representing England, Scotland, the Palatinate, Hesse, 
Switzerland, Nassau, East Friesland, and Bremen. The special 
object of the call of the synod was to oppose Arminianism, 
which had sprung up in Holland about the beginning of that 
century. The Arminians were represented by thirteen deputies, 
headed by Episcopius. " The English Episcopal Church, in 
which at that time the Arminian party was dominant, rejected 
the decisions of this synod, and a mandate of James L, in 1620, 
forbade the preaching of the doctrine of predestination." — Shedd. 
The deliverance of the synod embraces ninety-three canons, 
which constitute " a true, accurate, and eminently authoritative 
exhibition of the Calvinistic system of theology." 

(e) The Westminster Confessio?i and Catechisms. (A.D. 1643- 
1648.) 

This doctrinal standard is the product of an assembly of 
divines called by the English Parliament for the purpose of set- 
tling the government, liturgy, and doctrine of the Church of 
England. The assembly met at Westminster, July 1, 1643, and 



30 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

sat until February 22, 1648, holding in all one thousand one hun- 
dred and sixty-three sessions. Chosen from the several counties 
of England, the members of the assembly represented the Pres- 
bj'terian, the Episcopal, and the Independent Churches, Presby- 
terians being much in the ascendency. This doctrinal formula 
is adopted by "all the Presbyterian Churches in the world of 
English and Scotch derivation, and is of all creeds the one most 
highly approved by all the bodies of Congregationalists in En- 
gland and America." The convention of Congregationalists 
called by Cromwell, in Savoy Palace, Eondon, 1658, framed the 
Savoy Confession, which is so nearly the same as the Westminster 
that " the modern Independents have in a manner laid aside the 
use of it in their families, and agreed with the Presbyterians in 
the use of the assembly's catechisms." "All the assemblies con- 
vened in New England," continues Dr. Hodge, " for the purpose 
of settling the doctrinal basis of their Churches, have either 
indorsed or explicitly adopted this confession and these cate- 
chisms as accurate expositions of their own faith. The Cam- 
bridge (Mass.) Platform (1647-8), the Boston Confession (1679-80), 
and the Saybrook (Conn.) Platform (1708) are all of this Calvin- 
istic type." 

From the days of the great theologian whose name it bears 
Calvinism has largely dominated the thought of the Protestant 
world. It is a massive system, challenging the respect of pious 
souls by its exaltation of the sovereignty of God as displayed in 
an assumed unconditional eternal decree that determines what- 
soever comes to pass, and hinging salvation on sovereign elec- 
tion thereto before the foundation of the world, and without 
any thing foreseen in the creature as a reason for the choice, 
and similarly attributing the damnation of the non-elect to the 
good pleasure of God in passing them by. It could not result 
otherwise than that an assumption so fundamental would largely 
affect the theology and the anthropology of a system of doctrine 
in harmony with it. And so it has been. But to this doctrine 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 31 

an early formal protest was made, and the constant growth of 
that protest furnishes a long and interesting chapter in the prog- 
ress and emancipation of religious thought — a chapter not yet 
completed, New York, Chicago, and other places witnessing just 
now stormy theological discussions rising out of honest and 
irrepressible protest to Calvinism. This brings us to 

5. The Arminian Confessions. 

James Arminius, born at Oudewater, Holland, 1560, after a 
preliminary education spent six years in the university at Ley- 
den, and subsequently studied at Geneva, where he had for his 
instructor one of the most distinguished scholars of the day, 
Theodore Beza, a Calvinist of the most rigid type. Here he 
incurred the displeasure of the "Aristotelians of Geneva," and 
in consequence was compelled to leave. Going to Basle, he 
"was offered by the faculty of divinity in the university the 
degree of doctor, gratis, which, however, he did not venture to 
accept, on account of his youth." Calvinism had already occa- 
sioned in the Netherlands " a passionate controversy, which 
ended in the split of the Netherland Reformed Church." Ar- 
minius was drawn into the controversy, and being commissioned 
to defend the doctrine of his instructor, Beza, regarding predes- 
tination, it is said he carefully examined both sides of the ques- 
tion, and with the unexpected result that " he himself began to 
doubt, and at last came to adopt the opinions he had been com- 
missioned to refute." As Arminius is credited with a system of 
doctrine becoming so widely prevalent in the Christian world, 
his theological adherents find comfortable assurance in the abun- 
dant testimony to both his ability and his piety, one reliable 
authority declaring that "he was an extremely good man, as 
even his enemies allow ; his abilities also were of a high order ; 
his thinking is clear, bold and vigorous ; his style remarkably 
methodical, and his scholarship respectable, if not profound." 

The Arminians adopted no symbol or confession. The sources 
of their doctrines, as enumerated in Shedd's chapter on symbols, 



32 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

are these : (i) The writings of Arminius. (2) The Confessions 
of the Pastors called Remonstrants, by Episcopius. (3) The 
Remonstrance, by Peter Bertius, containing a specification of 
five points held by Arminius, in opposition to the well-known 
" five points " of Calvinism. (4) The writings of Grotius, Lim- 
borch, Wetstein, and LeClerc. In 1610 the Arminians (" Re- 
monstrants ") presented to the assembled states of the province 
of Holland a remonstrance containing the following five propo- 
sitions, as being the logical results of the teaching of Arminius : 

1. That God had indeed made an eternal decree, but only on 
the conditional terms that all who believe in Christ shall be 
saved, while all who refuse to believe must perish. 

2. That Christ died for all men. If the efficacy of his death is 
restricted, it is by unbelief. 

3. That no man is of himself able to exercise saving faith. 

4. That without the grace of God men can not do any thing 
good, but that grace does not act in men in an irresistible way. 

5. That believers are able, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, vic- 
toriously to resist sin ; but that the question of the possibility of 
a fall from grace must be determined by a further examination 
of the Scriptures on this point. 

The last point in the fifth item was a year later decided in the 
affirmative by the Arminians, their action adding to the fierce- 
ness of the controversy and causing the Calvinists to " put forth 
a strong ' counter- remonstrance ' plainly asserting absolute pre- 
destination and reprobation." Politics added to the fury of the 
conflict, which reached such a stage of violence that the Calvin- 
ists refused to submit to an edict of the states for toleration to 
both parties, and the Arminians found it necessary to guard 
themselves from violence by the aid of a guard of militia-men, 
notwithstanding which several lost their lives, and the learned 
Grotius, with others, was cast into prison. The battles that fol- 
lowed have doubtless helped to give us the " purer air " and the 
" broader view" of our day, when Christians differing in faith 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 33 

exhibit a better spirit, and theological disputants show much 
greater zeal for truth, and less for party. On all sides the prog- 
ress of our race toward the better day has been through effort, 
struggle, sacrifice, and much seeming loss. When the theolog- 
ical giants, equipped with all the armor that learning, logic and 
rhetoric could supply, strode forth to what seemed merely drawn 
battles, and retired mutually worsted, there was indeed apparent 
loss of most valuable moral power, but it now seems that 
through all the conflict theological thought was taking a set in 
the right direction. To-day it is a deep, broad current, no- 
where more obvious than with the denominations professing to 
hold to the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. Having 
at our very origin taken our bearing far away from the troubled 
waters of Calvinism, as Cumberland Presbyterians we now may 
opportunely invite our brethren still " driven up and down in 
Adria" to examine the theological chart by which we find 
smooth sailing on a sea of divine mercy unlimited by a partial 
atonement or an eternal decree of unconditional reprobation. 

In proof of the alleged drift of theological thought, the fol- 
lowing action, just adopted by the Presbytery of New York, 
and passed with but three dissenting votes, is pertinent and, 
as indicating wide-spread demand, is hopefully significant of a 
near grouping of Protestant bodies into fewer organizations, 
and thereby, as we may believe, of greater efficiency in the 
common work : 

" Furthermore, as germane to the subject which the assembly 
had in mind in referring these questions to the presbyteries, 
your committee recommends that this presbytery overture the 
General Assembly to invite the co-operation of the Presbyterian 
and Reformed Churches of America and of Great Britain and 
Ireland to formulate a short and simple creed, couched, so far as 
may be, in Scripture language, and containing all the essential 
and necessary articles of the Westminster Confession, which 
creed shall be submitted for approval and adoption as the com- 

3 



34 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

mon creed of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches of the 
world. We believe that there is a demand for such a creed, not 
as a substitute for our Confession, but only to summarize and 
supplement it for the work of the Church. We would and we 
must retain our standards, which we have as our family inherit- 
ance and as the safeguard of our ministry and of our institu- 
tions. But a brief and comprehensive creed, at once interpret- 
ing and representing those standards, would be welcomed by our 
Churches as most helpful and beneficent for the exposition of 
what we have meant, through all these years, by the ' system of 
doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures.' We want no new doc- 
trines, but only a statement of the old doctrines made in the 
light and in the spirit of our present Christian activities, of our 
high privileges, and of our large obligations — a statement in 
which the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our L,ord shall 
be central and dominant." 

The following is the creed of the illustrious orator and states- 
man whose name is subscribed, as he communicated it to a 
friend, August, 1807, saying, " Some time ago I wrote down, for 
my own use, a few propositions in the shape of articles, 
intending to exhibit a very short summary of the doctrines of 
the Christian religion, as they impress my mind." The reasons 
given for his belief of each article are omitted : 

" I believe in the existence of Almighty God, who created 
and governs the whole world. 

" I believe that God exists in three persons. 

" I believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be 
the will and word of God. 

" I believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God. And I believe 
there is no other way of salvation than through the merits of 
his atonement, D. Webster." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 35 



CHAPTER V. 

A FULLER ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WESTMINSTER 

SYMBOLS. 

"DESIDES their relation to our own Confession and Catechism, 
the Westminster Standards are doctrinal formulae of very 
great interest. The circumstances under which they were 
formed, their contents, and the extent to which for nearly two 
hundred and fifty years they have anchored the best theological 
thought of the world, will forever invest them with interest to 
the student of the progress of religious thought. 

On June 12, 1643, what was called the Long Parliament issued 
an ordinance calling an assembly to meet at Westminster, on 
the first day of July. On the 2 2d of June the King issued a 
proclamation forbidding the meeting, declaring that no acts done 
by them ought to be heeded by his subjects, and threatening 
that if they should meet he " would proceed against them with 
the utmost severity of the law." This proclamation had the 
effect to deter the Episcopalian members from attending, and 
thereby really furthered the cause of Presbyterian polity aifd 
Calvinistic theology. The King and Parliament alike claimed 
the right to reconstruct the Church ; but many, even then, be- 
lieved it was no business of either. 

" When the Parliament issued the ordinance for calling to- 
gether an assembly of divines," says Hetherington's History of 
the Westminster Assembly, "there was, it will be remembered, 
actually no legalized form of church government in England, so 

far as depended on the legislature The chief object of 

the Parliament was, therefore, to determine what form of church 



$6 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

government was to be established by law in the room of that 
which had been abolished." The unhappy state of things in 
England is charged, by the writer last quoted, on the Prelatic 
system — " how Prelacy had governed and how Prelacy had 
taught the English people." "At first it showed its tyrannical 
tendency by imposing ceremonies not warranted by the word 
of God, and associated with popery, and by enforcing these with- 
out the slightest regard to tenderness of feeling or liberty of 
conscience. Advancing on its despotic career, it interfered with 
the forms and the language of worship, prescribing to man after 
what manner, and in what terms, he was to address his Creator, 
without regard to that Creator's commands. At length it 
reached its extreme limits, and presumed to exercise absolute 
control over the doctrines which Christ's ambassadors were to 
teach, thus rashly interfering not merely with man's approach to 
God, but also with God's message to man." 

The order convoking the Westminster Assembly delegated to 
one hundred and fifty-one persons the right to membership 
therein, namely, ten Lords and twenty Commons as lay assess- 
ors, and one hundred and twenty-one divines. It seems to show 
a wish of fairness on the part of the Parliament, as Hethering- 
ton remarks, that they named men of all shades of opinions in 
matters of church government, and that there was an honest 
purpose to secure a competent discussion of the whole subject. 

*'*At length the appointed day came ; and on Saturday, the ist 

of July, the members of the two Houses of Parliament named 

in the ordinance, and many of the divines therein mentioned, 

and a vast congregation met in the Abbey Church, Westminster. 

» 
Dr. Twisse, the appointed prolocutor of the assembly, preached 

an elaborate sermon from John xiv. 18: 'I will not leave you 

comfortless. I will come unto you.' " No business being in 

readiness for the assembly, it adjourned until Thursday of the 

next week. "This very fact," observes Hetherington, "points 

out one peculiarity of the Westminster Assembly — it was neither 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 37 

a convocation nor a Presbyterian Synod or General Assembly, 
and it could not be either the one or the other, for the Prelatic 
form of Church government had been abolished and there was 
no other yet in existence. The true theory of the Westminster 
Assembly comprises two main elements : (1) There was a Chris- 
tian Church in England, but not organized; (2) and the civil 
power, avowing Christianity, had called an assembly of divines 
for the purpose of consulting together respecting those points 
of government and discipline which require the sanction of civil 
authority for their full efficiency." 

By agreement all propositions were to originate with Parlia- 
ment and go then to the assembly. Strict rules of procedure 
in business were adopted at the start, and such as seemed to aim 
at securing fairness on all questions and to all parties. To 
further secure the honest ends aimed at, it was resolved at the 
opening that every member of the assembly, whether a lord, 
common, or divine, should bind himself by solemn oath before 
taking a seat, which oath ran in this way : "Ido seriously prom- 
ise and vow in the presence of Almighty God that in this assem- 
bly, whereof I am a member, I will maintain nothing in point 
of doctrine but what I believe to be most agreeable to the word 
of God, nor in point of discipline but what I shall conceive to 
conduce most to the glory of God, and the good and peace of 
his Church," and it is recorded that this protestation was ap- 
pointed to be read afresh every Monday morning, that its solemn 
influence might be constantly felt. 

Preliminaries settled, the Parliament sent the assembly an 
order to "revise the Thirty-nine Articles, for the purpose of 
simplifying, clearing, and vindicating the doctrines contained 
therein." About ten weeks had been occupied in this discus- 
sion, only the first fifteen of the Thirty-nine Articles having 
been under discussion, when occurrences gave a new and unex- 
pected turn to the deliberations of the grave body. Upon the 
first purpOvSe to call the Westminster Assembly the Parliament 



38 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

applied to the Scottish Church to send commissioners, and steps 
toward granting the request were taken by the Church, which 
appointed some ministers and elders to be in readiness. But 
owing to delay in the meeting of the proposed assembly, or be- 
cause of not wishing to interfere in the strife between the King 
and his Parliament, the Scottish delegates declined to attend. 
In consequence of this failure English commissioners attended 
the Scottish General Assembly early in August, 1643, presenting 
an appeal signed by seventy divines, " supplicating aid in their 
desperate condition," which " letter," says one historian " was so 
lamentable that it drew tears from many eyes." But how assist- 
ance could be given to England without jeopardizing Scotland 
was the very difficult problem of the hour. The commissioners 
had assured their minds with reference to the sincerity of the 
Parliament, but " the Scottish statesmen and ministers could not 
but perceive that if the King should succeed in subjugating his 
Parliament he would then be able to assail Scotland with an irre- 
sistible force." Another difficulty grew out of the fact that the 
English commissioners sought aid for the defense of the civil 
liberties of both countries, while the entire spirit of the contest 
in which Scotland had been engaged was of a religious charac- 
ter, and only in defense of religious liberty. The famous docu- 
ment known as the "Solemn League and Covenant" was the 
result, which, combining the idea of mutual aid in defense of 
civil liberty with that of aid in the defense of religious liberty, 
claimed as its objects " the reformation and defense of religion, 
the honor and happiness of the King, and the peace and safety 
of the three kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland." It 
was passed unanimously on the 17th of August by the Scottish 
Assembly, " amid the applause of some and the bursting tears 
of a deep, full, and sacred joy of others ; and in the afternoon, 
with the same cordial unanimity, passed the Convention of 
Estates." 

A copy of the " Solemn League and Covenant " was forwarded 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 39 

the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, and, 
with " slight verbal alterations " for the sake of explanation, it 
was agreed to by all the assembly " except Dr. Burgess, who 
continued to resist it and to refuse his assent for several days, 
till he incurred the serious displeasure of both assembly and 
Parliament, which he at last averted by yielding." Accordingly, 
on September 15, the Scottish commissioners consented to take 
seats in the Westminster Assembly, only six in all, who were 
welcomed with great kindness and courtesy in three successive 
speeches. On the 25th of September both branches of Parlia- 
ment subscribed the " Solemn League and Covenant," and in 
the most impressive manner " the prolocutor read it from the 
pulpit, slowly and aloud, pausing at the close of every article, 
while the whole audience of statesmen and divines arose, and, 
with their right hands held up to heaven, worshiped the great 
name of God and gave this sacred pledge." Speaking of this 
event, a prominent member of the assembly declared it " a new 
period and crisis of the most great affair which these hundred 
years has exercised these dominions," and Hetherington adds 
that " he was not mistaken ; it was indeed the commencement 
of a new period in the history of the Christian Church, though 
that period has not yet run its full round, nor reached its crisis — 
a crisis which will shake and new mold the world." The great 
principles set forth in this memorable " League and Covenant," 
while they may not justify the claim that "it is the wisest, the 
sublimest, and the most sacred document ever framed by unin- 
spired men," certainly do render it a most remarkable deliver- 
ance in its spirit, its aim, and its clear enunciation of truths that 
are indeed new molding the religious world. 

The course affairs had taken led the Parliament to direct the 
Assembly to lay aside the work of revising the thirty-nine ar- 
ticles, in order to prepare as speedily as practicable " such a dis- 
cipline and government as may be most agreeable to God's holy 
word." The country was ecclesiastically, no less politically, in a 



4-0 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

state of the utmost confusion and unrest. Because Prelacy had 
been set aside or for other reasons " there had sprung up a great 
number of sects, holding all various shades of opinion in relig- 
ious matters, from such as were simply absurd down to those 
that were licentiously wild and glaringly blasphemous. It is 
almost impossible even to enumerate the sectarians that rushed 
prominently into public manifestation when the overthrow of the 
prelatic hierachy and government rendered it safe for them to ap- 
pear, and it would be wrong to pollute our pages with a state- 
ment of their pernicious and horrible tenets." The Presby- 
terians, the Independents, and the Krastians were the three 
principal parties as to theories of ecclesiastical polity, the Kras- 
tians claiming that all ecclesiastical power belongs to the civil 
authority. The debates, contentions, and intrigues by which 
these several parties sought to gain the ascendency make up a 
large part of the proceedings through which was finally reached 
a system of discipline and government which has gained wide 
acceptance. In October, 1647, both branches of the Parliament 
accepted the results of the labors of the Assembly, which was 
regarded as " the final settlement of the Presbyterian Church 
government, so far as that was done by the L,ong Parliament, 
in accordance with the advice of the Westminster Assembly of 
Divines." But this establishment of the Presbyterian govern- 
ment was only " until the end of the next session of Parliament," 
or about a year, before the expiration of which period " the Par- 
liament itself had sunk beneath the power of Cromwell, whose 
policy was to establish no form of Church government, but to 
keep every thing dependent on himself, though his chief favors 
were bestowed on the Independents." 

Of the reverses which in the immediate future awaited Presby- 
terianism in England our limits will not permit us to speak. 
The brief reference — too brief to be satisfactory — to some of the 
leading events of one of the most remarkable epochs in the 
world's history serves to indicate the heat of discussion in which 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 41 

was forged a system of ecclesiastical government at once com- 
pact, symmetrical, and efficient, and justifying perhaps, the high 
claim of its advocates, that it is, " of all systems that have ever 
existed in the Church, the most agreeable to the principles of 
Church government which may be deduced from Scripture." 

Resuming the work of framing a Confession of Faith, the West- 
minster Assembly appointed a" committee to prepare and arrange 
the main propositions which were to be discussed and digested 
into a system, who reduced the whole to thirty-two distinct 
heads, which heads were subdivided into sections. The com- 
mittee resolved itself into sub-committees, " each of which took 
a specific topic for the sake of exact and concentrated delibera- 
tion." When the entire committee had agreed upon a report 
from a sub-committee, that article was reported to the Assembly, 
and " again subjected to the most careful and minute in- 
vestigation, in every paragraph, sentence, and word." So the 
work was carried to completion. According to Hetherington, 
whose history of the Assembly is unquestioned authority, 
"throughout the deliberations of the Assembly while composing 
the Confession of Faith, there prevailed almost an entire and 
perfect harmony." On the doctrine of election they had " long 
and tough debates." The only other article that occasioned 
much debate is this : " The Lord Jesus, as King and Head of his 
Church, has therein appointed a government in the hands of 
Church officers distinct from the civil magistrate." This prop- 
osition was understood as condemning the spirit of Krastianism, 
and hence was bitterly opposed by the Krastian party, but was 
finally adopted, there being but one dissenting vote. Copies of 
the Confession were printed, that the members of Parliament 
might severally examine it, and in March, 1648, a meeting was 
held for comparing their opinions, both houses participating, the 
result of which is expressed by the following record: "The 
Commons this day (March 22), at a conference, presented the 
Lords with the Confession of Faith passed by them, with some 



42 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

alterations, viz., that they do agree with their Lordships, and so 
with the Assembly, in the doctrinal part, and desire the same 
may be made public, that this kingdom, and all the Reformed 
Churches of Christendom, may see the Parliament of England 
differ not in doctrine." 

It has been well observed that the Westminster Confession 
deserves the attention of all students of theology, not only as a 
remarkable monument of Christian learning, but as the most 
representative expression of a great spiritual movement which 
has tinged the national thought of Britain, and modified the 
course of its history. Of its thirty-three chapters, only twenty- 
one are distinctly doctrinal. It makes the doctrine of the eternal, 
unconditional divine decree fundamental, subordinating all others 
to it. In the Reformed Churches it has evoked an amount of 
study and discussion second only to that bestowed on the 
Scriptures. It has divided Christian bodies and reunited them. 
What of its hold upon the Christian world of to-day ? 

Dr. C. A. Briggs, of Union Theological Seminary, who claims 
to have spared no time, labor, or expense necessary to the in- 
vestigation of the question, declares that from the Westminster 
Standards, in their historical sense, "modern Presbyterianism 
has departed all along the line." After declaring the Westmin- 
ster symbols " the most elaborate and definite of all the creeds 
of Protestantism," he adds : " But it is clear to any one who has 
studied the genesis of the Westminster Standards, and the doc- 
trinal history of Great Britain and America, that the Presby- 
terian and Congregational Churches have drifted in many im- 
portant respects from the Westminster orthodoxy." In his book 
suggestively entitled Whither f Dr. Briggs devotes several chap- 
ters to the proof of his assumption that " the American Presby- 
terian Church has drifted away from the Westminster Stand- 
ards," and sums up the result in the declaration, " We have seen 
that the Presbyterian Church has departed from the nine chap- 
ters of the Confession considered in the present chapter, into 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 43 

serious error. In the whole realm of doctrine and practice 
contra-confessional views, that strike at essential and necessary 
articles, and destroy the Westminster system, are either enter- 
tained by large numbers of our ministry and people, or else are 
allowed to remain unchallenged by the orthodox, and are toler- 
ated as if they were errors of small importance." 

While I can not indorse the theological system of Dr. Briggs, 
I heartily commend his book for its fair and independent utter- 
ances, and as exhibiting much valuable research, upon which I 
shall have occasion to draw for illustration in the pages that are 
to follow. The following sentences embody truths of vast im- 
portance and of wide application in the great problem of the 
evolution of a system of theology in harmony with all truth, as 
one must be to be a true system : " None of the older divines 
gave the human reason its proper place in religion and theology." 
"The Bible .... does not war against the truths of nature, of 
the reason, or of history. " . . . . "The sacred Scriptures are for 
the whole world, and for all time. As man grows in the knowl- 
edge of nature, of himself, and of history, he will grow in the 
knowledge of the Scriptures." 



Part II. 

Doctrinal Statement and Exposition. 



DOCTRINAL STATEMENT AND EXPOSITION. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 

^TpHB system of doctrine held and taught by the Cumberland 
Presbyterian Church is comprised in its Confession of Faith 
and the appended Catechism. It is not proposed to present in 
these pages a systematic commentary on our standards, but 
rather to give prominence to the statement and discussion of 
such doctrines as set forth our system of theology, and especially 
as that system is distinguished from what is popularly known as 
the Calvinistic system. It will fall within my aim to treat more 
at length also any doctrines on which there is current discussion 
in our Church. Our Standards were revised so lately as 1873, 
and rather hurriedly for a procedure of so great importance in 
its relation to the peace and purity of the body. It could not 
have been otherwise than that time for careful examination of 
all the phraseology employed by the revisers would have devel- 
oped differences of opinion as to the meaning of some of the 
doctrinal statements, and as to the propriety of some of the 
language used. It is a safe rule to hold that subordinate parts 
are to be interpreted in harmony with the system of doctrine 
embodied in the Confession, and all parts with reference to the 
Scripture passages cited as proof-texts. 

The doctrinal statements of the Confession are grouped under 
thirty-six leading topics, under which heads are one hundred and 
fifteen specifications. Under the first general topic, the Holy 
Scriptures, we have these four specifications : — 

(47) 



48 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

"1. The Holy Scriptures comprise all the books of the Old and 
the New Testament which are received as canonical, and which 
are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and prac- 
tice." [Here follows an enumeration of the books of the Old 
and the New Testament.] 

"2. The authority of the Holy Scriptures depends not upon 
the testimony of any man or Church, but upon God alone." 

" 3. The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary 
for his own glory — in creation, providence, and man's salvation 
— is either expressly stated in the Scriptures, or by necessary 
consequence may be deduced therefrom ; unto which nothing at 
any time is to be added by man, or from the traditions of men ; 
nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the 
Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of 
such things as are revealed in the word." 

"4. The best rule of interpretation of the Scriptures is the 
comparison of scripture with scripture." 

The first item is doubtless intended for a definition of the 
Scriptures, but it serves to remind us that if the function of lan- 
guage be not " to conceal thought," words are often so collated 
as to express thought very imperfectly. The language implies 
that only as many of the books of the Old and the New Testa- 
ment as " are received as canonical " are comprised in the Holy 
Scriptures. But are there in the Old and the New Testament 
any books not received as canonical ? 

The Westminster Confession defines a little more clearly, 
thus, " Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the word of God 
written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New 
Testaments, which are these," the enumeration following. 

Whether the added relative clause in our Confession, "and 
which are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and 
practice," is further restrictive as to the books (of the two Tes- 
taments) that are to be comprised in the Holy Scriptures, or 
whether it is an independent assertion of the inspiration of the 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 49 

canonical books, it is difficult to decide. Notwithstanding its 
obscurity — a criticism indulged in no censorious spirit, and that 
may serve as an apology for obscurities in these pages — the first 
item sets forth three important propositions, namely : 

1. Cumberland Presbyterians receive as canonical the thirty- 
nine books of the Old Testament, and the twenty-seven books 
of the New Testament, as these sixty-six books are held by all 
other Protestant Churches. 

2. That the Holy Scriptures, comprised in the books specified, 
are "given by inspiration of God." 

3. That they are given " to be the rule of faith and practice," 
or, in the stronger expression of the fifth section of the Intro- 
duction to the Confession, "the only infallible rule of faith and 
practice." 

For the rejection of the books usually included in what is 
termed the Apocrypha received by the Roman Church, the fol- 
lowing reasons are asigned : (1) The authors of these books do 
not claim inspiration ; (2) the books contradict one another, and 
contradict also the books usually called canonical ; (3) the Jews 
never acknowledged them to be inspired ; (4) they were written 
after the days of Malachi, with whom, , as the Jews believed, the 
gift of prophecy ceased ; (5) they are never quoted by Christ or 
his apostles ; (6) they were not received in the first ages of 
Christianity as canonical; (7) in the Roman Catholic Church 
they were not received by the most learned divines, until late in 
the sixteenth century the Council of Trent declared for the 
inspiration of the Apocryphal books. 

There is wide difference of opinion as to what is meant by the 
statement that the Scriptures are " given by inspiration of God," 
some holding that only the doctrines contained in these books 
are divinely communicated, but that the writings are not inspired ; 
while another view asserts such a divine guidance of the minds 
of the writers as secured an inspired statement of the divinely 
imparted doctrines ; and a third view asserts verbal inspiration, 



5<3 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

or that the very words in which a revelation was first made were 
suggested by the Holy Ghost. If there is in the Cumberland 
Presbyterian Church a current theory in regard to the exact im- 
port of the "inspiration of the Scriptures," the writer is unable 
to state it. It is possible for Christians to differ widely in re- 
spect to this point, and yet all hold that " all Scripture is given 
by inspiration," and all hold it in a sense that will render the 
Scriptures "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, 
for instruction in righteousness." Whatever may be the truth 
in regard to the original manuscripts through which inspired 
men first gave to the world a revelation of the will of God, not 
one of these manuscripts is known to be now in existence, and 
hence it is certain that we now can have but copies and transla- 
tions that have come to us through the fidelity of pious and 
learned men who did not claim the gift of inspiration. 

The following passage from Dr. A. A. Hodge's Commentary 
on the Westminster Confession presents the view of a plenary 
inspiration, extending even to "infallible expression in words:" 

" The books of Scripture were written by the instrumentality 
of men, and the national and personal peculiarities of their 
authors have been evidently as freely expressed in their writing, 
and their natural faculties, intellectual and moral, as freely exer- 
cised in their production, as those of the authors of any other 
writings. Nevertheless, these books are, one and all, in thought 
and verbal expression, in substance and form, wholly the word 
of God, conveying, with absolute accuracy and divine authority, 
all that God meant them to convey, without any human admixt- 
ures or additions. This was accomplished by a supernatural in- 
fluence of the Spirit of God acting on the spirits of the sacred 
writers, called ' inspiration,' which accompanied them uniformly 
in what they wrote, and which, without violating the free opera- 
tion of their faculties, yet directed them in all they wrote, and 
secured the infallible expression of it in words. The nature of 
this divine influence we, of course, can no more understand than 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 51 

we can in the case of any other miracle. But the effects are plain 
and certain, viz. : that all written under it is the very word of 
God, of infallible truth, and of divine authority ; and this infalli- 
bility and authority attach as well to the verbal expression in 
which the revelation is conveyed, as to the matter of revelation 
itself." 

This doctrine of "verbal inspiration," taught by Hodge and 
the Princeton theologians, is strenuously opposed by Dr. Briggs, 
in his work already mentioned, as being a wide departure from 
the historic teachings of the Presbyterian Church. "These 
Princeton divines risk the inspiration and authority of the 
Bible," Dr Briggs goes on to say, " upon a single proved error. 
Such a position is a serious and a hazardous departure from 
Protestant orthodoxy. It imperils the faith of all Christians 
who have been taught this doctrine. They can not escape the 
evidence of errors in the Scriptures. This evidence will be 
thrust upon them whether they will or not No more dan- 
gerous doctrine has ever come from the pen of men. It has 
cost the Church the loss of thousands. It will cost us tens of 
thousands and hundreds of thousands unless the true Westmins- 
ter doctrine is speedily put in its place. This false doctrine cir- 
culates in a tract bearing the imprint of the Presbyterian Board 
of Publication, among our ministers and people, poisoning their 
souls and misleading them into dangerous error." 

These conflicting views are cited to show, not only the extent 
of the divergence of opinion with respect to the sense in which 
inspiration may be held, but that scholars of high reputation, 
who are accredited teachers in theological schools of the same 
denomination, arrive at widely different conclusions in their in- 
vestigation of this question. 

Dr. T. C. Blake, in his compend of theology, after stating the 
two principal theories of inspiration, adds that "the preponder- 
ance of authority is certainly in favor of the latter method — 
verbal inspiration," and proceeds to argue thus : 



52 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

" It is a fact, which no one will call in question, that we think 
in words. Words are the vehicles of thought as well as of com- 
munication. It is as impossible to think without words as it is to 
speak without words. This being true, how could God make a 
revelation to man without words ? and if words were employed 
to convey the mind or will of God, the question arises, whose 
words were thus employed ? Most certainly these were God's, 
else they could not be a revelation from him. The ideas could 
not have been given without the words, because without them 
they could not have been conceived." 

If we allow that Dr. Blake's theory is true as to the original 
documents in which God revealed himself to man, it proves too 
much for any book that is now claimed to be a revelation, or, in 
other words, leaves the world without a revelation. If we have 
an English New Testament, what one of the many versions can 
lay claim to that distinction, according to Dr. Blake's test of in- 
spiration ? 

The solemn practical question perplexing many pious minds 
doubtless is, whether modern criticism really leaves the world 
any scriptures that may be called a revelation from God in any 
sense that would constitute them an " infallible rule of faith and 
practice." Does it leave the world a Bible? In view of obvious 
facts there seems to be but one reasonable answer to this ques- 
tion, and that is in the affirmative. Not only so, but the versions 
of the Bible now extant in hundreds of the languages of the 
world, some exhibiting greater and some less fidelity to the text 
most approved by modern criticism, are all to be regarded as the 
word of God in every feature necessary to convey to men the 
will of God and the great scheme of gospel redemption. They 
produce like effect throughout the world. Through their instru- 
mentality men are everywhere born into the same spiritual life, 
begotten unto the same blessed hope of salvation and everlasting 
life. 

Dr. A. F. Mitchell, in his introduction to the Minutes of the 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 53 

Westminster Assembly, declares that " if any chapter in the Con- 
fession was more carefully framed than another it was this, 'of 
the Holy Scriptures.' . . . And I think it requires only to be 
fairly examined to show that its framers were at more special 
pains than the authors of any other Confession: 1. To avoid 
mixing up the question of the canonicity of particular books 
with the question of their authorship, where any doubt at all 
existed on the latter point ; 2. To leave open all reasonable ques- 
tions as to the mode and degree of inspiration which could be 
consistently left open by those who accepted the Scriptures as 
the infallible rule of faith and practice ; 3. To refrain from claim- 
ing for the text such absolute purity, and for the Hebrew vowel 
points such antiquity, as was claimed in the Swiss Formula Con- 
cordice, while asserting that the originals of the Scripture are, 
after the lapse of ages, still pure and perfect for all those pur- 
poses for which they were given ; 4. To declare that the sense of 
the Scripture in any particular place is not manifold, but one, 
and so raise an earnest protest against that system of spiritual- 
izing the text which had been too much countenanced by some 
of the most eminent of the Fathers, and many of the best of the 
mystics." 

The best scholarship and thought lead to these conclusions 
touching this question of so very grave importance : 

1. That plenary inspiration of the Scriptures as we now have 
them, or such inspiration as extends to the words of the Script- 
ures, and excludes the possibility of error in every particular, 
can not be defended. 2. That for all the purposes for which the 
Scriptures were given, namely, to " teach what man is to believe 
concerning God, and what duty God requires of man," they are 
truly inspired, having been given to the world through men who 
gave utterance as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and that 
the Scriptures are thus an infallible rule of faith and practice. 
3. That the claim for the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures as 
we now have them, whatever may have been true as to "the 



54 



DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



ipsissima verba of the original autographs," is pernicious in its 
tendency, as being a claim not justified by the facts in the case, 
and thereby calculated to beget distrust in the intelligent mind, 
as to the general claim of the Bible to be the word of God. The 
evil tendency may not be so serious as would be inferred from 
the declaration of Dr. Briggs, that " no more dangerous doctrine 
has ever come from the pen of men," but with respect to this 
question, as to all others, it must be that the Church can build 
securely only as it builds on the foundation of truth. The 
sooner we come to rest upon the truth, the less will be the dam- 
age to be repaired. 

As another illustration of the manner in which the docrine of 
plenary inspiration has impressed the minds of many of the 
profoundest thinkers of our times, we cite the following para- 
graphs from M. Guizot's Meditations on Christianity : 

"And yet this is what is pretended by fervent and learned men, 
who maintain that all, absolutely all, in the Scriptures is divinely 
inspired, the words as well as the ideas, all the words used upon 
all subjects, the material of language as well as the doctrine that 
lies at its base." 

" In this assertion I see but deplorable confusion, leading to 
profound misapprehension of the meaning and the object of the 
sacred books. It was not God's purpose to give instruction to 
men in grammar, and if not in grammar, neither was it any 
more God's purpose to give instruction in geology, astronomy, 
geography, or chronology. It is on their relations with their 
Creator, upon duties of men toward him and toward each other, 
upon the rule of faith and conduct in life, that God has lighted 
them by light from heaven." 

" The Scriptures speak upon all subjects ; circumstances con- 
nected with the finite world are there incessantly mixed with 
perspectives of infinity ; but it is only to the latter, to that future 
of which they permit us to snatch a view, and to the laws they 
impose on men, that the divine inspiration addresses itself; God 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 55 

only pours his light in quarters which man's eye and man's labor 
can not reach ; for all that remains the sacred books speak the 
language used and understood by the generations to whom they 
are addressed. God does not, even when he inspires them, 
transport into future domains of science the interpreters, or the 
nations to whom he sends them ; he takes them both as he finds 
them, with their traditions, their notions, their degree of knowl- 
edge or ignorance as respects the finite world, of its phenomena 

and its laws Whatever true or false science we find in the 

Scriptures upon the subject of the finite world, proceeds from 
the writers themselves or their contemporaries; they have 
spoken as they believed, or as those believed who surrounded 
them when they spoke. On the other hand, the light thrown 
over the infinite, the law laid down, and the perspective opened 
by that same light, these are what proceed from God, and which 
he has inspired in the Scriptures. Their object is essentially 
moral and practical ; they express the ideas, employ the images, 
and speak the language best calculated to produce a powerful 
effect upon the soul, to regenerate and to save it." 

But the question at the bottom of the whole discussion, and 
fundamental to the very idea of religion, is, Can we be assured 
that the writings we call the Scriptures are in a true sense 
inspired? Has God truly spoken to his rational creatures in 
this world? No question that engages our thoughts can have 
profounder interest than this one. Among the most intense 
yearnings of the human soul is its ceaseless petition for a revela- 
tion with respect to the unseen and that which is to be. " Show 
us the Father, and it sufficeth us ! " Aside from the Christian 
Scriptures, the world knows no book whose claims to inspiration 
will at all stand the test of reason. Aside from these, the soul's 
cry for light as to duty and destiny is taunted with but an empty 
echo. But in these Scriptures themselves it is claimed that God 
spake to Moses, to David, to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, to Malachi; 
that in later times he spake to Peter, to James, to Paul, to John, 



56 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

thus so filling up the measure of divine revelation as to make it 
indeed an infallible rule of faith and practice. A firm conviction 
that these Scriptures are from God is at once the most rational 
support and the most powerful stimulus to good that can come 
to a human soul. " I have read the sacred volumes over and 
over again," sa3^s M. Guizot; "I have perused them in very 
different dispositions of mind, at one time studying them as 
great historical documents, at another admiring them as sub- 
lime works of poetry. I have experienced an extraordinary 
impression, quite different from either curiosity or admiration. 
I have felt myself the listener to a language other than that of 
the chronicler or the poet, and under the influence of a breath 

issuing from other sources than human God is there, 

always present, acting. It is the God One and Supreme, All 

Powerful, the Creator, the Eternal These books are really, 

with respect to the religious problems that beset man's thoughts, 
the Light and the Voice of God, revealing the duties which God 
enjoins upon men in the course of their present life, and the 
prospects which he opens to them beyond the imperfect and 
limited world where this life passes/' 

Whoever will thus come to the earnest, candid, persevering 
study of the Scriptures, yielding himself to a purpose to do the 
w 7 ill of God as that will becomes manifest, and opening his heart 
to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, will most certainly expe- 
rience that God is speaking to him through these Scriptures, 
and that they are able to " make him wise unto salvation." So 
he declared who came a Light into the world : " If any man will 
(honestly resolve to) do his will (as made known to him), he shall 
know of the doctrine (/ teach), whether it be of God, or whether 
I speak of myself." In his comment on this passage, the younger 
Bengel says : " But that, in its turn, a more intimate access to 
the truth is thrown open by the obedience of the will, both this 
very declaration of the divine Savior, and the whole of Scripture 
besides, openly testify." To the same sentiment testify the 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 57 

passages, " He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but 
shall have the light of life," and, " If ye continue in my word, 
then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth." 

Aside from this internal witness to the inspiration of the 
Scriptures, which springs from obedience to the truth as it is 
perceived, and from the illumination of the Hoty Spirit, there is 
an intellectual assent to the inspiration of the Scriptures, which 
arises from the study of what are called the evidences of inspira- 
tion — a conviction that may come to the man who fears, rather 
than wishes, the Bible true, and is in willful rebellion against per- 
ceived obligation. Viewed in this light, the problem of inspira- 
tion is one which falls within the province of reason. What 
reason approves we accept ; what it disapproves we must reject. 
Our intellectual and moral being knows no higher law. We can 
accept no book as inspired, on the simple ground that it claims 
to be inspired. In like manner the whole problem of Christian- 
ity falls within the domain of man's reason, according to the 
verdict of which it must be accepted or rejected. As one of the 
profoundest thinkers of the century has said : "If Christianity 
be not fundamentally in accord with our original constitution, 
and will not restore man to a true manhood, and the highest 

manhood, we can not accept it Nothing that can be 

shown to be really in opposition either to reason or the moral 
nature of man, can be from God." It is true, also, that each 
generation must decide for itself the claims of Christianity and 
of the Bible. We do not accept even the propositions of geom- 
etry as true because Euclid declared them true, but we demon- 
strate them for ourselves. 

That man has a moral nature is attested by his consciousness. 
He is, in fact, under moral law. It is equally true that he is 
endowed with what may be called a religious nature. In all 
time, everywhere man has worshiped. The history of the race 
is not more a history of any thing than of religious beliefs and 
ceremonies. Equally true is it that man has a longing for 



58 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

immortality, and a perpetual craving for knowledge of the here- 
after that awaits him. These things being true, if we assume 
that there is an Infinite Intelligence, wise and good, who is the 
Author of our being, a revelation of the will of that Creator 
seems a most reasonable assumption, if not indeed a very 
demand of reason. Such a revelation being clearly possible, 
manifestly desirable, and absolutely necessary in order that man 
may realize the highest good of which his moral and spiritual 
faculties render him capable, we should come to the serious 
investigation of this momentous question expecting to find a 
revelation made through individuals of the race supernaturally 
guided for that purpose. 

If one were to happen upon a piece of mechanism unlike any 
he had before seen, he might be helped to understand its object 
and its value by learning when, and where, and by whom it was 
constructed ; but these items of information would be far less 
satisfactory than that which would come from an investigation 
of the structure and capabilities of the mechanism. From the 
mechanism itself would he determine whether it were a phono- 
graph, a chronometer, or a musical instrument. So, principally 
and ultimately, the conclusion we reach in regard to the inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures must depend on what we find the Scriptures 
to be, and what they are capable of doing for man. Given the 
Scriptures as we have them, and the known capabilities of the 
human mind, can the Scriptures be the product of uninspired 
mind ? Given man's moral and spiritual nature, and his need in 
view of his own consciousness of being in a fallen state, is the 
Bible fundamentally in accord with his constitution, and will it 
restore him to the highest and happiest manhood of which he is 
capable ? Practically, Christianity is a daily, persistent miracle 
of salvation from sin through the power of the Cross, bringing 
peace and comfort and hope in prospect of a better and endless 
life beyond the present unsatisfactory environment of mortal 
life. Can this system of salvation have originated in the con- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 59 

ception of unaided human reason ? One of the brightest intel- 
lects of England has said, " If the mind be vigorous and sane, it 
is incomparably easier to admit the divinity of Christ than to 
reject it, and read the Gospels without being perplexed and con- 
founded." So, as it seems to us, we may justly say of the 
Scriptures, a series of writings given to the world through the 
long interval of fifteen hundred years, yet all harmoniously 
blending in one grand system developed as the ages passed, and 
revealing a grand consummation to which all parts are conspir- 
ing, it is incomparably easier to accept them as the products of 
minds divinely guided, than to account for them on any other 
hypothesis. 

What are usually styled the " evidences of Christianity" 
•embrace a great variety of proofs of the inspiration of the 
Scriptures, and these proofs have been, and to the end of time 
will continue to be, cumulative. With a better understanding of 
man's own nature, of the world about him, of the adaptation of 
the Bible to his need, and of the unfolding of the divine purpose 
revealed in the Bible, will come increased conviction of its har- 
mony with all truth and of its divine origin and mission. Its 
inspiration has been argued from the claims of its writers to 
inspiration ; from the fulfillment of prophecies contained 
therein; from the many miracles wrought by Christ in the 
presence of numerous competent witnesses; from the unity of 
its teachings ; from its spotless morality ; from the moral char- 
acter of its writers; from its blessed effects upon individuals, 
society, and nations ; from the dignity of its style and the sub- 
limity of its language ; from the correspondence between its 
teachings and what is called natural religion ; from the inherent 
power of Christianity to propagate itself; from the absolute moral 
excellence of the Founder of Christianity, who was the fulfill- 
ment of the types and prophecies of the Old Testament, and from 
his life, teachings, work, death, and resurrection, which are the 
burden of the revelation of the New Testament. 



60 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Upon every one of these " evidences" volumes have been 
written, as also upon others not here enumerated. The last 
specified, or what we may designate "Christ's testimony to 
Christianity," is the central idea with which all must stand, or all 
be abandoned as fable or imposture. Spinoza, the Pantheistic 
Jew, of Amsterdam, perceived its logical relation to the system of 
Christianity when he declared, " If I could persuade myself that 
Jesus of Nazareth wrought one miracle, that he raised the dead, 
for instance, I would dash my system to pieces, and at once ac- 
cept the belief of common Christianity." Christ is the perpetual 
unanswerable testimony to Christianity, and thereby to the in- 
spiration of the Bible. Veiled in flesh that he might tabernacle 
with men, and pour into their souls his own thoughts and ten- 
der sympathies, at the appointed time Christ steps from the 
bosom of eternity upon the platform of earth, and starts the 
world upon a new career of thought and feeling and action. 
" One God, one Messiah, one Humanity ! the whole race occupying 
one broad level of moral equality, with no recognized distinction 
in the sight of heaven but that of personal character ! And yet 
this initial Idea of the new Era, so intensely hated, so simple 
that a child's mind can apprehend it when once stated, shining 
by its own light, touched and roused at once the popular heart, 
the common conscience, the universal reason and judgment of 
mankind, so as to win conviction, to revolutionize opinion, to 
uplift and reconstruct individual and social character throughout 
every rank and class of men and women, from the highest to the 
lowest, from the center of the metropolis to the hut of the wil- 
derness. And so onward from that day to the present, this 
Messianic Idea has developed itself in history as the chief re- 
forming power on the face of the earth." * 

" How was it," asks the author of the foregoing extract, " that 



* Self -witnessing Character of the New Testament, by Rev. Win. 
Hague, D.D. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 6 1 

this Galilean fisherman, who had so lately left his boats and nets, 
arose so quickfy to this eminence as the teacher and prophet of 
the ages, inculcating in a few words the one principle that, des- 
pite the mightiest antagonisms, has been the life-power of the 
world's progress during the eighteen intervening centuries, and 
is recognized at once as the living force of the present, the hope 
of the future?" 

To this question no infidel has been able to frame a reply at 
all so credible as that given by St. Peter when, before the 
multitude assembled in the house of Cornelius to hear of the 
wonderful words of Christ, he " opened his mouth and said : " 

" Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, 
but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteous- 
ness is accepted with him. The word which God sent unto the 
children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of 
all), that word ye know, which was published throughout all 
Judea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John 
preached ; how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy 
Ghost and with power ; who went about doing good, and healing 
all that were oppressed with the devil ; for God was with him. 
Him God raised up the third day and showed him openly. And 
he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that 
it is he which was ordained of God to be the judge of quick and 
dead."— Acts x. 35, etc. 

We can not give too much prominence to the thought that 
Christ is the most convincing testimony to Christianity, and 
thereby to the inspiration of the Book which bears to the world 
the teachings of Christianity. Never do the pages of that Book 
seem so luminous with inspiration as when read in the light of 
the Sun of Righteousness viewed in his life, his doctrine, 
and his functions as prophet, priest, and king. It is a matter of 
personal experience with the writer that the arguments which 
have produced the profoundest conviction of the inspiration of 
the Scriptures, have been, not learned homilies on the authen- 



62 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

ticity and genuineness of the several books, or on theories of in- 
spiration, but plain scriptural sermons exalting Christ in his 
person and offices. The last time it was our privilege to hear 
that eloquent and earnest minister of precious memory in the 
Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Rev. A. M. Bryan, D.D., his 
text, John x. 27 : " For him hath God the Father sealed," led him 
to discuss the divine attestation of the mission of Christ as the 
Redeemer of men, which attestation the speaker found in the 
prophecies fulfilled in Christ, in the miracles he wrought, in the 
circumstances of his death, in the stupendous fact of his resur- 
rection, and in the power of his life and teachings to renew a 
world spiritually dead, all of which was presented with such 
clearness and such fervor as to beget profound conviction in his 
great audience. And so, as it seems to us, will it ever be that 
he who has most of Christ in his argument will have most power 
to convince men that the Bible is inspired, and that Christianity 
is of divine origin. 

If we admit the inspiration of the Scriptures, it follows that 
we accept them as an infallible rule of faith and practice. It is 
for the specific purpose of instructing man as to what he shall 
believe concerning God, and how, as a rational creature respon- 
sible for his conduct, he shall behave toward his fellows and his 
Creator, that this supernatural revelation was made. Embodied 
in written language, that revelation has been transmitted 
through the centuries, and will be transmitted to the end of 
time, and through the printing-press these Scriptures may 
now find their way to every inhabitant of earth. It is altogether 
a thing possible that " the earth shall be full of the knowledge 
of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." 

The second item in the Confession, which declares that " the 
authority of the Holy Scriptures depends not upon the testi- 
mony of any man or Church, but upon God alone," is retained, 
in abbreviated form, from the Westminster Confession. It is 
designed to declare the doctrine of the Reformation and the 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 6$ 

" boast of Protestantism " that every man should read and inter- 
pret the Scriptures for himself. Catholicism insists that an in- 
fallible Church is the source of all authoritative interpretation. 
It makes " the Scriptures a product of the Church, while in fact 
the Church is a product of the Scriptures." Individual inde- 
pendence and individual responsibility are of the very essence 
of Christianity, and its legitimate product everywhere. Bondage 
to " tradition " (things handed down) has been one of the heaviest 
yokes on the neck of humanity, and especially with respect to 
religion. When Christ was upon earth the Jews were serving 
the " traditions of the elders;" between Roman Catholics and 
the word of God stand the " traditions of the Church ; " and 
with too many Protestants there is manifest bondage to tradi- 
tions of confessions, time honored standards, great names, the 
fathers, etc. There is a conservatism that is healthful, and 
a respect for the fathers that is becoming, and creeds, commen- 
taries, decrees of councils, and systems of theology may be 
helpful to the inquirer after truth, but beyond and above all 
these stand the Scriptures, to which every man should come for 
himself under a sense of solemn obligation to receive and defend 
the truth as he believes it taught therein. 
The third item of the section teaches : — 

(a) That the Scriptures are a complete rule, as revealing the 
whole counsel of God so far as it is needful for man to know 
that counsel in order to secure his own salvation and rightly to 
discharge the practical duties of life, so as to glorify God 
therein. 

(b) That to this completed revelation nothing is to be at any 
time added by man or from the traditions of men. 

(c) That "the inward illumination of the Spirit of God" is 
necessary for " the saving understanding of such things as are 
revealed in the word." 

Cumberland Presbyterians believe that this illumination of the 
Spirit necessary to the saving understanding of the Scriptures is 



64 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

given to every man. As in Adam all died unto spiritual good, 
so in Christ are all made alive to the ability to hear, understand 
and believe the gospel. This Spirit of illumination is given to 
reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; 
and leaves without reasonable excuse all hearers of the word 
who reject it, since by submitting themselves to the bestowed 
Spiritual illumination — a gift co-extensive with the loss occa- 
sioned by the fall — they would be guided, through the instru- 
mentality of this word, to faith, obedience, holiness, and heaven. 

The fourth item contains what it denominates "the best rule 
of interpretation of the Scriptures," namely, " the comparison. 
of scripture with scripture. " 

This rule assumes that the Scriptures are a grand unity, a sys- 
tem of truth harmonious in all its parts. As the Westminster 
Confession declares, " when there is a question about the true 
and full sense of any Scripture (which [sense] is not manifold, 
but one), it must be searched and known by other places that 
speak more plainly." Again and again in the history of inter- 
pretation do we see the mischievous effects of building a system 
of dogmatic theology on a passage or two of the Bible taken 
without reference to their logical relation to the scheme of re- 
vealed truth, and then proceeding to interpret the Bible by this 
preconceived theological system. Canon Farrar, in his Early 
Days of Christianity, charges Calvin with " explaining away " a 
passage that favors Arminianism, instead of "explaining" it, 
appropriately adding, " but the Calvinists had no monopoly in 
the distortion of the plain meaning of the sacred words — an 
error which belongs, alas ! to all sects and all religious partisans 
alike." 

An open Bible for all the world, is the genius of Protestant- 
ism. As in the Pentecostal baptism the disciples were endowed 
with miraculous power " to speak with other tongues, as the 
Spirit gave them utterance," in order that Parthians and Medes 
and Klamites and all other nationalities present might hear in 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 65 

their own tongues the wonderful works of God, so is it mani- 
festly the divine purpose that an open Bible, revealing God, and 
the way of salvation through a Redeemer, shall be given to all 
the inhabitants of earth, and in the language wherein all may 
read for themselves. Thus building on the word of God, with 
their brief Confession outlining only the fundamental doctrines 
of that word, Cumberland Presbyterians do heartily subscribe 
the sentiment of Chillingworth, " The Bible ! the Bible ! the re- 
ligion of Protestants." Never, seemingly, was the power of the 
open Bible more clearly perceived or more forcibly expressed, 
than by a writer of the Roman Catholic Church, who pro- 
nounced the English Bible the "stronghold" of what he chose 
to designate, referring to Protestantism, the " heresy in this 
country." "It is a part," he says, "of the national mind, the 
anchor of the national seriousness. Nay, it is worshiped with a 
positive idolatry. The memory of the dead passes into it. The 
potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. 
The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath 
its words. It is the representative of his best moments ; and all 
that there has been about him, of soft, and gentle, and pure, and 
penitent, and good speaks to him out of his English Bible. It is 
his sacred thing which doubt has never dimmed and controversy 
never soiled. It has been to him all along as the voice of his 
guardian angel ; and in the length and breadth of the land there 
is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him, 
whose spiritual biography is not in his Protestant Bible." 

5 



66 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



CHAPTER II. 

OF THE HOLY TRINITY. 

" Qection i. — There is but one living and true God, a self- 
existent Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his 
being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. 

" Section 2. — God has all life, glory, goodness, and blessed- 
ness in himself; not standing in need of any creatures which he 
has made, nor deriving any essential glory from them ; and has 
most sovereign dominion over them to do whatsoever he may 
please. 

" Section 3. — In the unity of the Godhead there are three 
persons of one substance, power, and eternity : God the Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit." 

The answers to the fourth, fifth, and sixth questions in the 
Catechism embody the same doctrine as the foregoing sections 
of the Confession. 

These sections assert or imply the following propositions : — 

1 . The existence of a being called God. 

2. That there is but one such being. 

3. That God is a self-existent Spirit. 

4. That he is, in his being and attributes, infinite, eternal, and 
unchangeable. 

5. That God possesses in himself all perfection absolute and 
relative, is completely independent of all creatures, and has sov- 
ereign dominion over them. 

6. That the Godhead exists in Trinity, implying : 

(a) Three persons of one substance, power, and eternity. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 67 

(b) That the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each 
alike truly this one God. 

1. The existence of the being we call God. 

By logical sequence of parts, systematic theology will always 
start with the subject of the existence and attributes of God. 
Belief in the existence of God as a moral Ruler of the universe 
is fundamental to every thing that can be denominated a system 
of religion. So begins the most ancient of all creeds : " I be- 
lieve in God the Father Almighty." So the Nicene Creed: "I 
believe in one God, Maker of heaven and earth, and all things 
visible and invisible." Similarly the Thirty-nine Articles of the 
Church of England give the first place to this section : 

" There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without 
body, parts, or passions ; of infinite power, wisdom, and good- 
ness ; the Maker and Preserver of all things visible and invisible. 
And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons of one 
substance, power, and eternity : the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost." 

No peculiarity of the Scriptures is more striking, than the 
clearness, fullness, and confidence, with which they reveal God, 
not, indeed, formally presenting any argument in proof of his 
existence, but everywhere assuming it, and declaring that only 
" the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." The sublime 
declaration opening Genesis, " In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth," does not declare, but assumes the exist- 
ence of God, and this fundamental idea of God is carried forward 
to the closing sentences of St. John's Revelation, correlating to 
itself all the other doctrines of the Scriptures. This very feat- 
ure of the Scriptures seems to us a powerful argument for the 
existence of God — that an invisible superior intelligence poured 
upon the world, through the minds of the sacred writers, this 
flood of light on a subject which so radically concerns the be- 
havior, the hopes, and the destiny of man. 

Again, since it must be admitted that man can not foresee 



68 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

future events which depend on contingencies, if the Scriptures 
contain prophecies that have been fulfilled, they thereby afford 
proof of the existence of some intelligence superior to man, and 
endowed with prescience. In like manner if the Scriptures 
establish beyond question that a miracle took place — that is to 
say, that an event occurred which could not be an effect of what 
is called the " course of nature," then a power above nature must 
be assumed. In these and other ways the Scriptures may be 
said to afford proof of the existence of God. 

The proof-texts cited under the first section are very significant 
of the confidence and clearness with which the sacred writers 
assume the being and attributes of the Jehovah of the Bible : 

Deut. vi. 4 : Hear, O Israel : The I^ord our God is one I^ord. 
John iv. 24 : God is a Spirit : and they that worship him must 
worship him in spirit and in truth. Ex. iii. 14 : And God said 
unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM : and he said, Thus shalt thou 
say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. 
1 Tim. i. 17: Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, 
the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Rom. 
xvi. 27 : To God only wise be glory through Jesus Christ for 
ever. Amen. 

Rational theism embraces what may be known, without a 
divine revelation, as to the existence and attributes of God, and 
his relation to the world. On one extreme, some have held that 
aside from an antecedent supernatural communication of the 
idea of God, man could never have conceived that idea from the 
study of himself and the world in which he lives. Rev. J. 
Loughran, the first president of Waynesburg College, a man of 
very extensive reading, and a thinker of no ordinary ability, 
thus taught his classes, and with zealous assurance of the cor- 
rectness of his theory. Assuming the natural inability of the 
human mind to frame even the conception of a Supreme Being, 
he drew from the widely prevalent belief in such a Being a proof 
of an original revelation, and thereby of the existence of God, 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 69 

holding that polytheism and other erroneous theistic beliefs are 
but corruptions of the primitive revelation given to the parents 
of the race. Whether or not the various notions of the exist- 
ence and attributes of a divine being, found to-day among the 
nations destitute of the Bible, are to be regarded as " broken 
and scattered rays of original revelation," it is an interesting 
and significant fact that the oldest peoples of the world seem to 
have been monotheists before they were polytheists. Of ancient 
Egypt, M. Emanuel Rouge says : " The first characteristic of the 
religion is the unity of God, most energetically expressed : God, 
One, Sole, and Only ; no others with Him. He is the only Being 
living in truth." So a competent scholar tells us that the words 
significant of a divine being " show the religion of the ancient 
Chinese as a monotheism. . . . Five thousand years ago the 
Chinese were monotheists." And so archaeologists tell us that 
"in the period that lay behind the Homeric poems and the 
Vedas and the earliest Gothic and Scandinavian legends, when 
Greek and Roman, Indian, Celt, and Teuton, were still a single 
people, a single name for God was in use." 

Positivism, as represented by Comte, Herbert Spencer, and 
others, which teaches that " the only principle of certitude is the 
senses," denies, not only man's ability to derive from the natural 
world any knowledge of the existence of God, but also his 
ability to receive such knowledge by supernatural revelation, 
and teaches that man can know nothing but the phenomena of 
the world about him, and the laws which govern them. 

On the other extreme are those rationalists who assert that 
from the light of nature man may learn all that it is necessary to 
know about God's being and will, holding that the teachings of 
any supernatural revelation that may have been made are useful 
only because the teaching of nature is neglected. In its ulti- 
mate phase it denies revelation entirely, claiming that reason is 
adequate to account for every thing seemingly supernatural in 
religion. 



70 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

The first Confession of Faith adopted by Cumberland Presby- 
terians begins the chapter on the Scriptures with the assumption 
that " the light of nature, and the works of creation and provi- 
dence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of 
God, as to leave men inexcusable." In this opening sentence of 
our Confession is our first doctrinal departure from the West- 
minster Confession, which latter adds, to the words just 
quoted, this clause, " Yet they are not sufficient to give that 
knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto sal- 
vation." The two declarations combined leave those who have 
only the light of nature in the hopeless condition of having 
knowledge enough to render them inexcusable, but too little to 
render salvation possible. Some of the earnest advocates of 
revision of the Westminster Standards at the present time urge 
the same modification at this point that was made at the start by 
Cumberland Presbyterians, looking, as do other proposed changes, 
to the elimination of the sterner aspects of Calvinism. The 
passage in Rom. ii. 12-16 unquestionably teaches that it is possi- 
ble for the Gentiles who have not the law (the revealed will of 
God) to do by the guidance of reason and conscience the things 
required by the law, and thereby to attain to merciful accept- 
ance, through Christ's work in behalf of all mankind. 

That man may attain the idea of the being and the moral 
attributes of God by the study of the world about him, and to 
such an extent as to render him accountable, seems to be clearly 
taught in many places in the Scriptures. The passage in Ro- 
mans i. 19-23 declares that the reason why the wrath of God is re- 
vealed from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness 
of the heathen world, then so sunken in abominable iniquities, 
is, " Because that which can be known of God is manifested in 
their hearts, God himself having shown it to them ; for his eter- 
nal power and Godhead, though they be invisible, yet are seen 
ever since the world was made, being understood by his works, 
that they (who despised him) might have no excuse; because, 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 71 

although they knew God, they glorified him not as God, nor 
gave him thanks, but in their reasonings they went astray 
after vanity, and their senseless heart was darkened. Calling 
themselves wise, they were turned into fools, and forsook the 
glory of the imperishable God for idols graven in the likeness 
of perishable men, or of birds and beasts, and creeping 
things." 

So when he stood in the midst of Mars' hill, Paul addressed the 
Athenian philosophers, not as " too superstitious," according to 
our common version, but as in all things " religiously disposed," 
reminding them, however, that the " unknown god " to whom 
they had erected an altar, and whom they ignorantly worshiped, 
is " God who made the world, and all things therein," and that 
"in him we live, and move, and have our being," skillfully 
enforcing his doctrine by appealing to a sentiment of their own 
poets, that men are the offspring of God. Of two poets to whom 
Paul is here supposed to allude, one is Cleanthes, a Stoic philos- 
opher, who died about three hundred years before this remarka- 
ble appeal by Paul to the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers 
encountered at Athens. What is known as The Hymn of Clean- 
thes, composed in honor of Jupiter, abounds in sentiments so 
elevated and so nearly Christian as almost to compel belief that 
inspiration was its source. The following extract embraces the 
sentiment ascribed by Paul to their poets : 

" O under various sacred names adored ! 
Divinity supreme ! all-potent Lord ! 
Author of nature ! whose unbounded sway 
And legislative power all things obey ! 
Majestic Jove ! all hail ! To thee belong 
The suppliant prayer and tributary song, 
To thee from all thy mortal offspring due. 
From thee we came, from thee our being drew. 
Whatever lives and moves, great Sire, is thine, 
Embodied portion of the soul divine." 

— Translation by Gilbert West, LL.D. 

The following lines not only make the human will the source 



72 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

of evil, but seem to suggest the poet's faith in a grand renova- 
tion through the divine goodness : 

" Vice is the act of man, by passion tossed, 
And in the shoreless sea of folly lost. 
But thou what vice disorders canst compose, 
And profit by the malice of thy foes ; 
So blending good with evil, fair with foul, 
As thence to model one harmonious whole, 
One universal law of truth and right." 

Paul declares that through faith "we understand that the 
worlds were framed by the Word of God; " but David, gazing 
upon the vastly multiplied splendors of the sky as seen through 
the crystal atmosphere of the hills of Judea, rapturously ex- 
claims, " The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firma- 
ment showeth his handiwork ! " So in every age the most gifted 
and most thoughtful men have studied the goodly frame of the 
universe, and from the dependence, harmony, and manifest 
adaptations of its parts inferred the existence, wisdom, and 
power of an infinite Intelligence presiding over and directing it. 
That this universe should be the result of an accidental combi- 
nation of atoms, or of any forces not guided by intelligence, and 
hence of necessity working without design, seemed to poets, 
philosophers, and moralists a thing utterly incredible. Thus 
Cicero, in his treatise on " The Nature of the Gods'' declares: 
" I can not conceive why the man who thinks this possible, 
should not also imagine that, if innumerable forms of letters, 
whether of gold, or of any other kind, should be thrown to- 
gether into some receptacle, there could be accidentally made 
out of these, when shaken out upon the ground, annals capable 
of being read; whereas I doubt whether chance could effect 
any thing of the kind, even a single verse. But if a concurrence 
of atoms can produce a world, wlty not a portico, a house, or a 
temple? which would be less laborious, and indeed far easier." 

Nicole, of France, a profound thinker of the Cartesian school, 
wrote in 1670 : " I am persuaded that these natural proofs do 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 73, 

not cease to be sound. . . . Whatever efforts atheists may make 
to efface the impression that the sight of this great world forms 
naturally in all men, that there is a God, the creator of it, they 
can not entirely stifle it, so strongly and deeply is it rooted in 
our minds. We need not force ourselves to yield to it, but we 
must do violence to ourselves to contradict it. Reason has only to 
follow its natural instinct, to persuade itself that there is a God." 

We have dwelt upon this phase of the proof from natural relig- 
ion in order to come more intelligently to the status of the argu- 
ment as it is to-day. Men are ready to say, " We know that a 
watch must have been made by an artisan, and that a house im- 
plies a builder ; but science has taught us that the world was not 
made as a watch is fabricated, or as a house is built." And so 
they tell us the " technic " theory is a failure, for no agent outside 
of and above nature has worked upon it as a mechanic does on the 
materials which he fashions and combines into a house ; but an 
energy inherent in matter has developed all things, man himself, 
into what they are. The final stage of this doctrine is the reso- 
lution of the universe into a sum total of matter, force, and 
motion. In the language of another, the problem is thus stated 
and solved : 

" The world now is — once was not ; man and his works are — 
once were not. How and why did they come to be ? Nature is 
uniform, works everywhere from within, grows, does not con- 
struct, bears and becomes, does not manufacture, and science, 
as her interpreter, expresses her method or process by develop- 
ment, evolution. The forms of inorganic matter have been 
developed by the operation of necessary mechanical laws ; the 
forms of organic life have been evolved by the operation of nat- 
ural forces. Variation, the struggle for existence, the survival 
of the fittest, explain the endless varieties of organized beings 
that have lived and are living upon the earth. The interactive 
play of organism and environment, the creature and the me- 
dium in which it lives, has resulted in man and his works." 



74 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Admit that the theory stated in the foregoing paragraph be 
established, that " evolution " expresses the process by which 
the world came to be as it is — a thing not at all proved — and the 
only result is that we must modify our notion of the relation of 
a Creator to the world. Not in the least does evolution diminish 
the demand of reason for an intelligent cause of the world as it 
is. Evolution claims to show us the mode in which a cause has 
acted, but not the cause. Evolution is a theory of a method by 
which ends have been reached, not of a cause which operated to 
produce those ends. The main question still recurs, to which 
evolution proposes no answer, Whence came the thing called 
nature, and the wonderful potencies inherent therein? What 
started and directed the long process of evolution ? What deter- 
mined the end to which the long evolving process should work, 
as that end is seen in the present goodly frame of this world 
with its countless harmonies, adaptations, and final causes? 
Could chance, through the mode or process called evolution, 
have produced the system we call nature ? Evolutionists them- 
selves have not been slow to perceive that their theory does not 
remove the demand of reason for a first cause, though many of 
them try to express that cause in terms seemingly chosen to 
conceal the God their reason demands. There is a story in Plu- 
tarch to the effect that a satyr strove to stand a dead man up- 
right upon his feet, but gave over after many vain endeavors, 
saying, Deest aliquid intus — something is lacking within. So is 
it with a universe built upon any theory that leaves out God — 
something is lacking within, because of which lack it is a mo- 
tionless, dead universe. The author of the " Origin of Species " 
felt the need of this power, and confessed its presence : " There 
is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having 
been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one ; 
and that while this planet has gone cycling on according to the 
fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms, 
most beautiful and wonderful, have been and are being evolved." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 75 

Whatever may be the truth as to how belief in the existence 
of a Creator originated, it is unquestionable that this belief, 
already in the mind, is developed, modified, strengthened by the 
study of ourselves and the world in which we live. Profound 
philosophers ignorant of, or indifferent to, the teachings of the 
Bible, and devout Christians who base their faith implicitly on 
the Bible, have alike experienced and confessed their deepened 
sense of the presence of God as a result of their contemplation 
of the works of nature. If the universe, as limited, transient, 
and therefore necessarily dependent, compels belief in a change- 
less Being on whom it depends, the prevalence of design or final 
cause, throughout the universe, compels belief in the infinite in- 
telligence of this changeless Being. Before me lies a watch, a 
very slight knowledge of which teaches me that it is a thing that 
is transient, that it is dependent, that it must have had a begin- 
ning, that it could not have produced itself. Not only must it be 
"wound-up" daily in order to "run," but it will necessarily 
"wear out," or cease to be a watch. So my reason asserts again 
and again that something or somebody made the watch. But 
the watch is a microcosm — a miniature cosmos. What is true 
of it is true of the universe, in the respect in which I have 
spoken. The insect is ephemeral, the flower fades, man returns 
to dust, the heavens wax old as doth a garment. Something 
must have been before the earth and the world were formed, 
something from everlasting to everlasting. 

A closer survey of the watch convinces me that it not only 
was produced by some cause, but that it was made for a purpose 
— that a design existed in a mind, and that the watch is but the 
product of that design ; in other words the watch must have had, 
not only effi.cie7it cause, but that a fi?ial cause determined for 
what it should exist. As a whole, it is ingeniously contrived to 
indicate the passage of time, marking the flight into seconds, 
minutes, hours. Further study of it convinces me that every 
part of it, no less than the mechanism as a whole, exists for a 



J 6 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

purpose that was first in the mind of the contriver, and I am. 
able to see for what the hands, the case, the dial, the crystal, and 
every wheel, and lever, and screw are as they are and in the 
places assigned them. What is true of the watch is true of 
every work of man. A railroad that spans a continent, and the 
pen with which this sentence is written alike exist for a final 
cause, for an end foreseen as desirable, and therefore realized by 
the use of the necessary means. If now I lift my thought from 
my pen to the eye that guides the pen across the page, the 
numerous and varied parts of the eye, and their wonderfully 
nice adjustment to each other at once impress me that it is a. 
much more complicated structure than the simple pen in my 
hand, and as to function, that of the eye infinitely transcends 
that of the pen. I k?iow that the pen was made for the purpose 
of distributing ink in forms somewhat resembling the letters of 
the alphabet, and I know that the eye answers the wonderful end 
of a mirror to bring the outer world under immediate cognizance 
by my soul, so that, while I do not see the eye itself nor any 
images photographed in its chamber, I do " see " the table before 
me, the books upon it, the houses of the village, the distant hills 
crowned with forest trees, and still more distant clouds drifting 
away to the east. Must I then not believe that this wonderful 
eye was made for a purpose, and that the unconscious forces 
which, working in unconscious matter, however long the time 
required to evolve such an eye, were directed by an intelligence 
which first conceived and then purposed to construct such an 
organ to mirror the world to the soul? As these reflections 
engage my mind, I seem to myself as well assured that the world 
exhibits design, and therefore a designer, as I am of the truth of 
the demonstrable proposition, that the sum of the angles in a. 
triangle is equivalent to two right angles. As I go on reflecting 
on the wonderful relation the eye sustains to the enjoyments and 
the practical affairs of life, how the " cloud-capt towers," the 
" gorgeous palaces " and all the other magnificent works of man 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 77 

could never have been but for the marvelous powers of this 
little organ called the eye, I say to myself, Only Infinite Wisdom 
<;ould have designed and formed such an eye. 

Final cause implies three things: (1) An end foreseen, (2) a 
determination to realize it, (3) such control of materials and 
forces as will realize the end perceived and chosen. Thus, one 
" studies out " a beautiful dwelling, and the ideal rests in his 
mind for a time. By and by he resolves to realize his ideal, or to 
build just such a house. Then comes the intelligent control of 
forces in their application to wood, iron, stone, etc., until, the 
scaffolding removed, the realized ideal delights its owner. The 
only possible alternative to final cause, or design, is chance. If 
a hundred brick be dumped from a cart, we say that their juxta- 
position in the pile is simply a matter of chance, by which we 
mean that no mind controlled their motions according to a pre- 
determined order. If later we look upon the same brick and 
find them disposed in a pile counting 2x5 x 10, we say that 
"some one has piled them" — that is, has controlled their juxta- 
position according to a preconceived plan. 

Now, of our bodies and the material world in which we live, 
we must predicate final cause, just as necessarily as of the works 
of man. If there is one instance of design, there are millions. 
It is everywhere. The mind of the maker of a piano is in every 
key, and hammer, and wire in it, and equally is the mind of God 
in all his works. If a watch, a piano, a locomotive exhibits final 
cause, much more does the human bod}- as a whole and in the 
structure and correlation of its parts, making it indeed a " hymn 
to God." In the works of nature as in those of man, we justly 
infer the final cause, or design, of any part, from its capacity or 
adaptation. Thus it is said that Harvey was led to the brilliant 
discovery of the circulation of the blood by reflecting on the ob- 
served adaptation of the valves of the heart to such an end. In 
other words, the adaptation discovered in the structure of the 
heart led the philosopher to grasp the final cause that lay in the 



78 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Infinite Mind by which man is " fearfully and wonderfully 
made." 

Viewed in relation to final cause as everywhere displayed, the 
natural world brings God very near to us. It proclaims " God 
first, God midst, God last," and that " in him we live and move 
and have our being." It matters not how God made the world, 
whether according to the old mechanical conception, or accord- 
ing to the modern idea of a force within matter by which the 
cosmos is evolved, whether six days or millions of years have 
been occupied, and whether in the one mode or the other, it is 
equally true that in all its parts nature is working for the realiza- 
tion of ends which necessarily involve the supposition of a pre- 
ordaining and directing intelligence. 

We have thus briefly tried to make it clear that evolution, or 
the doctrine of the development of the universe by the agency 
of fixed laws working through vast periods of duration, by no 
means destroys, but rather in fact increases the force of the 
argument drawn from final causes. Just here, in the minds of 
many who have but slightly examined the doctrine of evolution,, 
arises much of the skepticism of the day, from a secret belief 
that science has really proved that all things could have come to 
be as they are, through the processes explained by evolution, and 
without a superintending intelligence. If any such doubter 
should read these lines, his faith in God should find reassurance 
in the following concessions selected from the many such made 
by most thorough advocates of the doctrine of evolution : 

Prof. Huxley says : " There is a wider teleology which is not 
touched b}' the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based on 
the fundamental proposition of evolution." 

Prof. Asa Gray, as strenuous and intelligent an advocate of 
evolution as our country has produced, and as competent as any 
other to see its relation to the doctrine of final causes, declares : 
" What is lost in directness may perhaps be gained in breadth* 
and depth. . . . The natural history of ends becomes consistent 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 79 

and reasonably intelligible under the light of evolution. As the 
forms and kinds rise gradually out of that which was well-nigh 
formless into consummate form, so do biological ends rise and 
assert themselves in increasing distinctness and variety. Vegeta- 
bles and animals have paved the earth with intentions." 

Prof. John Fiske, an enthusiastic advocate of Darwinianism, 
in his work, The Desti?iy of Man, says : " The doctrine of evolu- 
tion does not allow us to take the atheistic view of man. . . . 
He who recognizes the slow and subtle process of evolution as 
the way in which God makes things come to pass, must take a 
far higher view. . . . The Darwinian theory, properly under- 
stood, replaces as much teleology as it destro3 7 s. From the first 
dawning of life we see all things working together toward one 
mighty goal, the evolution of the most exalted spiritualities 
which characterize humanity." 

The doctrine of evolution, if true, by no means eliminates 
final cause. If, indeed, the conceived plan and the execution in 
its full development are so remote, and linked by a series of 
agencies so numerous, and working through periods so vast, 
even the greater seems the demand for intelligence as the author 
of such wonderful processes and results. Behind the screen of 
natural forces patient thought finds imperative demand for God 
to conceive, ordain, and energize the vast scheme. " We are, by 
the discovery of the general laws of nature," says Whewell, 
"led into a scene of wider design, of deeper contrivances, of 
more comprehensive adjustments. Final causes, if they appear 
driven further from us by such extension of our views, embrace 
us only with a vaster and more majestic circuit. Instead of a 
few threads connecting some detached objects, the}' become a 
stupendous network which is wound round and round the uni- 
versal frame of things. . . . Our discovery of laws can not con- 
tradict our persuasion of ends." " It would appear from modern 
discovery," says Canon Mozley, " that creative design was more 
distant and circuitous than the design of the human artificer in 



8o DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

constructing a machine ; was in less immediate contact with the 
result, and of earlier date in scheme ; that it acted on a large 
scale by bringing things together from different and distant 
quarters, and by the use of contingent materials, whose place in 
the plan was seen only by the light of the end. . . . But creative 
design is not obscured on these accounts, but only appears the 
more subtle, powerful, and grand." 

It is believed that the strongest of all proofs from final cause 
are to be found in the mind as endowed with intellect, sensi- 
bility, will, freedom, and a moral nature, man becoming thus a 
subject of moral law, and finding in himself thus endowed the 
data of a necessary belief in an Intelligent Creator and Moral 
Governor in whose image he is made. But upon this and other 
proofs commonly relied upon in the theistic discussion, the 
limits of this volume will not permit us to enter. After much 
study of the whole subject as one of absorbing interest and as 
sustaining a most important practical relation to morality, to the 
welfare of society, to science, and to religion, two conclusions force 
themselves upon us : (i) The universe is the product of an 
Infinite Intelligence, (2) we can know and interpret the uni- 
verse only because we are made in the image of that Intelli- 
gence. The universe thus becomes intelligible as being itself a 
thought — a thought of the infinitely wise Thinker, and only be- 
cause made in the image of that Thinker, could Kepler exclaim 
as he looked upon the visible world, " O God, I think Thy 
thoughts after Thee ! " Science is but the interpretation of the 
thought of God as it is discerned in the world, all branches of 
science combining to exhibit nature as a grand unity which 
proves it the thought of one mind. In the forcible words with 
which Noah Porter concludes his work on The Human Intellect : 
" We analyze the several processes of knowledge into their un- 
derlying assumptions, and we find that the one assumption 
which underlies them all is a self-existent Intelligence, who not 
only can be known by man, but must be known by man in order 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 8 1 

that man may know any thing besides. We are, therefore, not 
alone justified, we are compelled to conclude our analysis of the 
human intellect with the assertion that its processes involve the 
assumption that there is an uncreated Thinker, whose thoughts 
can be interpreted by the created intellect made in his image." 

Having given so much space to an attempt at stating a few of 
the grounds of theistic belief drawn from Natural Theology, we 
may most suitably close with some paragraphs from one of the 
most thoughtful and systematic works * of recent years, setting 
forth alike the advantages of Natural Theology, and the need of 
a supernatural revelation. After declaring that such studies 
" vindicate the great fundamental truth of the existence of God," 
the author affirms his conviction that " beyond all we can learn 
concerning God and his relation to the world from reason and 
nature, there is room and necessity for the light and teaching of 
a supernatural revelation," for — 

i. "Natural Theology can give only a partial and incomplete 
view of God's character. 

2. It leaves us in the dark as to man's specific end in life, and 
how he may accomplish it. 

3. Its intimations, though they suggest hope for the future, 
fail to bring immortality to full light. 

4. It does not explain the existence of sin and the depravity 
of our race. 

5. It furnishes no remedy for sin — no way of forgiveness, or 
salvation from sin. 

6. The history of mankind shows unquestionably that when 
left to the mere light of nature and reason men hold low and in- 
adequate conceptions of God, and are wanting in the knowledge 
necessary to a right, pure, and happy life. 

7. A revelation from God gives a fresh and most impressive 
proof of his existence. The great questions of truth and duty 
are answered. In God's light we see light." 



*Natural TJieology, by M. Valentine, D.D., LL.D. 



82 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

2. The Confession asserts that there is "but one living and 
true God." The unity of God carries with it the idea of exclu- 
sion — that there is no class of beings of the kind. The true 
God existing in unity is the only true God. This doctrine is 
taught in many passages of Scripture, some of which have been 
cited. The monotheism of the Hebrews was in marked contrast 
with the polytheistic beliefs of the nations around them, and 
through this chosen people was revealed to the world the vastly 
important idea of the unity of God. Natural Theology infers 
the same doctrine from what it regards the necessary oneness of 
an absolute First Cause, from the personality of that First Cause, 
and from the unity of the universe, since the unity of thought 
pervading the universe implies that it is the product of one 
Mind. Men are therefore the offspring of one Father, and thus 
constitute one brotherhood. 

3. That God is a self-existent spirit. In this are two proposi- 
tions, (a) God is self-existent — that is, a being absolute and unde- 
rived. Something must be self-existent. Whatever is not self- 
existent had a beginning, before which it did not exist. If noth- 
ing is self-existent, there must have been a time when nothing 
existed, and if so, nothing could have come into existence, for, 
as the old philosophers correctly reasoned, out of nothing noth 
ing can come. Therefore either the universe is eternal, or a 
self-existent being must have produced it. The latter seems the 
only rational conclusion. Said the late Professor Henry of the 
Smithsonian Institute : " The simplest conception which ex- 
plains and connects the phenomena is that of the existence of 
one spiritual Being infinite in wisdom, power, in all divine per- 
fections, which exists always and everywhere." Out of the 
attribute of self-existence comes that of eternity. From ever- 
lasting to everlasting, God is God, without beginning, without 
end. (5) That God is a spirit. This refers to our conception of 
the essence of God, for he is a true being, an entity. It implies 
that he is not matter — that he is not possessed of material parts. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 83 

He is not the universe, nor a force, nor the sum total of the 
forces in the universe, but a person, spiritual in essence. Mate- 
rialism, or the doctrine that there is in the universe no entity 
except that which we cognize by the senses, and call matter, is 
essentially atheistic. If all our thoughts, volitions, and feelings 
were millions of years ago in the " fire-mist," out of which they, 
equally with our bodies, have been evolved, then design is itself 
but a product of matter, and the universe is utterly destitute of 
any testimony to an intelligent author. Says Sir William Ham- 
ilton: "It is only on the supposition of a moral liberty in man 
that we can attempt to vindicate a moral order, and, conse- 
quently, a moral governor in the universe. ... In the hands of 
the materialist, or physical necessitarian, every argument for the 
existence of a Deity is either annulled or reversed in a demon- 
stration of atheism." Hamilton further argues, and rightly, 
that free will is the ultimate fact on which we are warranted in 
assuming a second substance that we call spirit. The distinction 
between matter and spirit is radical, and must be held, if we are 
to retain any rational basis for ideas of morality, religion, or 
God. 

But some tell us they know matter, but they can not know 
spirit ; that they know matter exists, but that they can not know 
that there is spirit. Sufficient reflection will teach us, however, 
that we may have as valid assurance of the existence of spirit, 
as of matter, yea firmer assurance. Strictly speaking we can 
know neither matter nor spirit. We know their attributes, and 
we by logical necessity infer the entities that make the attributes 
possible. I am conscious of reasoning, remembering, willing, 
and other mental processes, and I must believe there is a some- 
thing capable of these processes. I am conscious of freedom. 
But if I am in any true sense free — that is, if what I call my 
mind, my very self, is endowed with the power of self-determi- 
nation, then my volitions are not links in the chain of physical 
causation, and there is a something that is not matter. We are 



84 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

not conscious of matter, and not conscious of mind. We are 
conscious of what compels a conscious belief in the existence 
of both. I look upon an apple before me, and say it is red; 
touch it, and say it is cold; taste it, and say it is sweet. But 
*'red" and "cold" and " sweet" as used in such a connection 
-signify only mental states called sensations. Of the entity, the 
matter composing the apple, that something which occupies 
space, and is endowed with properties which under proper rela- 
tions to my body will awaken the sensations of red, cold, sweet, 
I know absolutely nothing. I infer a something, a substratum 
beneath the properties, and call it matter. Similarly, I refer my 
sensations, emotions, volitions, and all the other contents of con- 
sciousness to a something, a substratum without which they 
could not exist. The attributes of the two substrata are so 
unlike, so utterly incapable of being converted the one into the 
other, and of any common standard of comparison, that if I call 
the substratum to one set matter, I must call the substratum to 
the other by a term significant of a nature essentially different — 
spirit. Then, since spirit possesses the attributes of intelligence, 
volition, freedom, purpose, and has power to know the proper- 
ties of matter, to modify it in the relations of its parts, and to 
use it to realize intelligent designs, and since the material world 
is evidently the product of intelligence and design, the only ad- 
missible conclusion is that its Author is a spirit infinitely wise. 

There are those who regard reasonings like the foregoing as 
unsatisfactory, and therefore profitless ; but to the writer they 
are extremely helpful, and therefore satisfying, deepening con- 
viction in the inmost recesses of the soul that an infinite Spirit, 
Spirit of our spirits, is everywhere and ever present " beholding 
the evil and the good," the Moral Governor of a vast economy 
of intelligences of which the human race is but a fractional 
part. " Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I 
flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art 
there ; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 85 

take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts 
of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right 
hand shall uphold me." 

Remembering the golden rule that the comparison of scripture 
with scripture is the best rule of interpretation, since many pas- 
sages clearly teach that God is a spirit, we will explain all the 
passages which represent him as possessed of bodily organs, or 
material parts, as simply employing modes of expression adapted 
to man's habit of receiving and imparting ideas through such 
organs. "And when the Scriptures speak," says Dr. A. A. 
Hodge, "of his repenting, of his being grieved or jealous, they 
use metaphorical language, teaching us that he acts toward us 
as a man would when agitated by such passions. Such meta- 
phors are characteristic rather of the Old than of the New Tes- 
tament, and occur for the most part in highly rhetorical passages 
of the poetical and prophetical books." 

4. It is taught that God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable 
in his being, and his attributes of wisdom, power, holiness, 
justice, goodness, and truth. 

" When we speak of God as infinite, we mean that his being 
can not be brought under any limitations of space or time ; nor 
can any of his attributes be classed as finite." To our minds, 
infinite being, infinite power, infinite wisdom, and the like, are 
terms which can not be grasped in their positive meaning, for the 
finite can not comprehend the infinite, and yet both reason and 
the Scriptures teach us that God is not subject to any of the 
limitations which render man finite. We must believe many 
things which we can not understand, and the infinity of God is 
manifestly one of them. 

The divine Personality as infinite implies, (a) Omniscience, or 
unlimited intelligence, (b) omnipotence, or unlimited power, (c) 
omnipresence, or presence not limited in space — God everywhere, 
(d) unlimited wisdom, or that application of knowledge which 
always selects the best ends and the best means for accomplish- 
ing them. 



86 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Holiness is defined "the state of freedom from sin." But sin 
is "the transgression of the law." Therefore the infinite holi- 
ness of God, is the eternal and perfect consonance of his will 
with that moral law which necessarily imposes, on man and all 
other moral creatures, obligation to obedience. The love of moral 
rectitude, the hatred of sin, conformity of will to the law of 
righteousness make up the content of the term holiness. 

5. The goodness of God is infinite, eternal, unchangeable. It 
is infinite in degree, knowing no limitation ; eternal, as existing 
always; unchangeable, admitting neither increase nor diminu- 
tion. 

Love and benevolence are terms used in the same sense as 
good. The idea involved is that of a disposition to seek the 
highest good of sentient creatures. But the highest good of 
a sentient creature is in that condition in which it perfectly real- 
izes the end for which it exists. Man's chief end is to glorify 
God and enjoy him forever, and the choice of this end for a 
fellow-creature is goodness in the one so choosing. God not 
only endowed man with faculties rendering him capable of hap- 
piness, but, as infinitely good, he wills that every man, and every 
other sentient creature, shall attain the good of which he is 
capable. " Rational love, as a whole," says Mark Hopkins, " will 
include a choice by us for all other beings of their end and good, 
and (a choice) for ourselves of our end and good." So to choose 
for another is to love him according to the divine requirement. 
Because God is infinitely good he loves, and commands all 
rational intelligences to love. He who loves in this sense is 
born of God. Always to will in accordance with the law of love 
is to be holy, as well as good, and just, as well as good and holy. 

No truth is more explicitly asserted in the Scriptures, or more 
variously and frequently repeated, than that God is good. The 
words " God" and " good " are, in fact, synonyms, implying that 
the very idea of goodness is that of likeness to God. In Anglo- 
Saxon, whence we get the word, God means the one who is good. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHUB-CH. 87 

The divine goodness extends even to brute creatures, for he 
opens his hand to satisfy the desires of every living thing. Not 
a sparrow falls without his care. Whatever of pain may seem 
inseparable from the animal economy, it is, nevertheless, mani- 
festly the will of God that earth, and sea, and air be theaters of 
happy life. Man's rational and moral faculties lift him into 
higher spheres of enjoyment in the acquisition of knowledge 
and the practice of virtue, thus raising him to companionship 
with angels and God himself. Also, and for the sole purpose, so 
far as we can see, of adding to our enjoyment, the divine good- 
ness has endowed us with an aesthetic nature, which is kindled 
into conscious delight when through the senses the outward 
world is mirrored to the soul. Our social nature, also, as the 
source of friendship, affection, and other ties that bind souls in 
fellowships true and sweet, must be regarded as a fountain 
opened by infinite love. Thus within us and without us proofs 
innumerable give confirmation to the Bible doctrine of the infi- 
nite goodness of God — a doctrine which itself is a well-spring 
of peace to the soul receiving it in its fullness, causing it to sing 
amid all life's experiences : 

" God is love ! his mercy brightens 
All the path in which I rove ; 
Bliss he wakes, and woe he lightens — 
God is wisdom, God is love ! " 

Proofs of the goodness of God, from whatever source drawn, 
are strengthened when we remember that man's moral and spir- 
itual faculties are deadened by sin, and that the divine goodness, 
as thus manifested to the unworthy and the undeserving, is gra- 
cious and merciful. As a moral being, man is a system in 
derangement, an organism whose head is sick and heart is faint ; 
and in the light of this truth man's own experiences and the 
Scriptures must be interpreted. God made us to be perfectly 
good, therefore perfectly happy; but we have sinned, and so 



88 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

have brought upon ourselves spiritual death, with all its train of 
ills. Still, God loves us — is gracious, pit}dng us, and seeking 
our deliverance. Read in the one hundred and third Psalm 
the fervent and eloquent expressions of a soul flooded with a 
sense of the goodness of God, and of the mercy which is "from 
everlasting to everlasting." 

The doctrinal system of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church 
places in the foreground the doctrine of the infinite goodness of 
God, making that love which wills the good of all the source 
of a merciful provision for the salvation of all. At the very 
start, our fathers cast out the vicious element of a decree which 
unconditionally predestinates some men to everlasting life, and 
ordains others to everlasting death. If such an unconditional 
decree is held, the infinite goodness of God must be given up. 
The two are logical contradictions. The great demand for a 
revision of the Westminster Standards at this time is based on 
an alleged necessity for a doctrinal statement that will bring into 
prominence the goodness of God. But the Calvinistic system, 
placing the universal, unconditional decree in the foreground, 
has no place for the infinite goodness. That system retained, 
no logic is competent to the task of putting goodness in the 
foreground, or of finding any place at all for infinite goodness. 
The Cumberland Presbyterian Confession and the Westminster 
Confession teach systems that are logical antagonisms, as will 
appear more fully in chapters to follow, and the contrast of the 
two systems will always appear when they are viewed in their 
relation to the love of God. One puts love at the head of the 
chapter, the other puts it in a foot-note. Those who rejoice in 
the truth, and especially those who long to see our sin-stricken 
humanity transformed by the power of faith in the infinite love 
of a common heavenly Father, will sympathize with all move- 
ments for such a revision of Christian creeds as will show God 
to the world as the loving Father seeking the happiness of all 
his creatures, rather than as an arbitrary and dread Sovereign 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 89 

inspiring the hearts of his creatures with awful fear or hopeless 
despair, in view of his absolute, eternal decree. 

Dr. Howard Crosby's " The Good and Evil of Calvinism " pre- 
sents an admirable outline of Cumberland Presbyterian theology, 
as the system of scriptural truth remaining after he has elimi- 
nated from Calvinism, as its "evil," every thing characteristic 
of it as a system. In the conclusion Dr. Crosby states in the 
same brief paragraph that personally he is content with the Con- 
fession, and also that it should be so modified as to conform to 
God's word: "But although we are personally content with our 
standards, yet, as the error referred to has undoubtedly been a 
stumbling-block to God's saints (we care nothing for what the 
world says), we feel the importance, nay, the necessity, of taking 
this stumbling-block out of the way. The Third and Tenth 
Chapters should be so modified as to conform to God's word, 
and not be a burden on the conscience of devoted and godly 
men." 

In an interesting notice of Dr. O. W. Holmes at fourscore, in 
The New England Magazine for October, 1889, the writer says: 
" In another way Holmes has quite as much hope as Emerson 
had, and quite as strong a faith in the good the universe contains. 
His belief in the philosophy of joy has been at the heart of his 
severe criticisms of the old forms of theology. To him, as much 
as to Whittier, God is the eternal goodness ; and he has not been 
able to think of God as wishing for any thing else than the hap- 
piness of his creatures." It is for God in this aspect of God as 
the eternal goodness, as the loving Father desiring the good of 
his creatures, and of all his creatures, that the heart of humanity 
yearns ; and only a God of love can be preached to men with 
hope of winning them to God and heaven. To us it seems sin- 
gular that Dr. Crosby should express indifference "for what the 
world says," for it is most certainly true that the very error he 
declares "has undoubtedly been a stumbling-block to God's 
saints," has no less certainly been a stumbling-block in the way 



90 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

of sinners, over which multitudes have stumbled either into 
downright unbelief or into secret bitterness of feeling toward the 
supposed arbitrary Sovereign in the Father whose loving heart 
yearns for the salvation of all. It is largely in the popular sen- 
timent of the times, if we mistake not, that is found the con- 
fessed demand for a revision of the Calvinistic standards. A 
foreign journal before me contains a brief editorial paragraph 
from a North-western secular journal, seemingly penned in not a 
very kind spirit, but characteristic of the popular demand named, 
which paragraph, for that, very reason, has twice crossed the sea : 
"The Presbyterians have concluded to amend their Confession 
of Faith. Sentences which have stood the buffetings of two 
hundred years are to be changed, and little babies will be damned 
no longer. The funniest part of yesterday's proceedings in the 
New York Presbytery was the motion that the} r leave the wrath 
of God and the damnation of the heathen and of infants in the 
text, and put the love of God in a foot-note. This tearing away 
of the old land-marks of the road to heaven is a severe blow to 
the fathers in Israel, but nevertheless it is a mark of progress. 
The God of the liberal Presbyterian is infinitely more divine 
than the God of those who desire an avenger rather than a lov- 
ing Father. The Presbyterian Church will be all the better for 
the elimination from its creed of the crudities of former genera- 
tions." 

That which thoughtful men, both out of the Church and in the 
Church, are demanding of Christianity is a creed in harmony 
with man's own consciousness, the dictates of reason, and the 
obvious teachings of the Scriptures as a whole. Cumberland 
Presbyterians, making the infinite goodness of God the central 
doctrine of their system, and to it subordinating all others in 
their true logical relations, believe their creed consonant with 
the Bible and the requirements of enlightened reason. 

Finally, the Confession teaches that God exists in Trinity. 
This is a doctrine we learn only from the Scriptures, neither 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 91 

reason nor the world about us giving any intimation of it. It is 
fundamental to the system of redemption, which represents God 
as loving the world, and giving his Son to die for it ; Christ as 
becoming incarnate, and assuming the functions of prophet, 
priest, and king ; the Holy Ghost as sent to act in the office of 
Comforter of God's children, and to enlighten and reprove the 
world. Believers, according to the command of Christ, are bap- 
tized into "the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost," the "three that bear record in heaven." The con- 
current Christian doctrine of the Trinity, as drawn from the 
Scriptures, is well expressed in the following propositions : — 

1. "That Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are each equally that 
one God, and that the indivisible divine essence and all divine 
perfections and prerogatives belong to each in the same sense 
and degree. 

2. " That these titles, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are not 
different names of the same person in different relations, but of 
different persons. 

3. " That these three divine persons are distinguished from 
one another by certain personal properties, and are revealed in a 
certain order of subsistence and operation." * 

These points may fitly conclude this chapter : — 

1. Man is essentially a religious being. A God is the demand 
of his nature. " The universality of religion admits of but one 
explanation — the universal is the necessary. What man every- 
where has done, he could not but do. His nature is creative 
of religion. And, so, religion is the fruit of faculties given in 
our nature." 

2. The main source of the differences distinguishing the many 
religions of the world is in the conception and representation of 
the deity worshiped. Almost innumerable objects, from sticks 
and stones deified b}^ fetichism, to the High and Holy One of the 
Scriptures, have received religious homage. 

* Hodge's Commentary. 



92 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

3. Man is influenced by nothing else so much as by religion. 
He who worships Buddha is like Buddha. "A nation's genius, 
rises as its consciousness of God deepens. The point where the 
genius and culture of Greece culminated was the very point 
where it had come to realize most vividly the being and govern- 
ment of God." It is impossible for those living in a Christian 
land fully to estimate their indebtedness to Christianity. Even 
those who make no profession of Christianity, who may dis- 
credit its divine origin and authority, are unconsciously and 
wonderfully molded by its influence. A French infidel well 
said: " The best that is in me is from Christ." 

4. The Hebrew and Christian conception of God as One, a 
pure Spirit, self-existent, infinitely good, wise, and just, is incom- 
parably superior to any other theistic conception known to the 
world. The communication of the knowledge of this true and 
only living God to the world, through a selected people, who 
were surrounded by nations idolatrous, polytheistic, and given 
to the horrible rite of human sacrifices, seems to us a stupen- 
dous miracle. "This, then, was the gift of the Semitic race in its 
noblest branch to the world — faith in the righteous, living God. 
A gift so splendid might well hold in it the regeneration of the- 
world, giving to it not only the idea of the Divine Unity, but 
religion changed into a mighty and commanding reality, which 
penetrates and inspires the whole man, dignifies him with the 
consciousness of a divine descent, gladdens him with the hope 
of a happy, because a holy, immortality, quickens him with the 
sense of omnipotence moving everywhere to the help of man in 
the soft guise of infinite gentleness. He who knows what these 
things mean will best understand that ancient saying, ' Salvation 
is of the Jews.'"* 

* Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History, by A. M. Fairbairn. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 93 



CHAPTER III. 

OF THE DECREES OF GOD — A GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

TVTOTHING that can be said negatively of the doctrinal system 
* of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church is more true or more 
characteristic of it than that it is ?m-Calvmistic. I am well aware 
that it is not uncommon with our people, some ministers in- 
cluded, to speak of our theology as "a mild form of Calvinism," 
''the Calvinistic system slightly modified," "Calvinism with the 
sterner features omitted," etc. With my views of the two doc- 
trinal systems, I can only say that those who speak in such 
phraseology as the foregoing either have not carefully compared 
the two systems, or are very careless in the use of language 
which the facts in the case will not at all justify. The probable 
explanation of the mistake alluded to is to be found in the fact 
that those who organized the Cumberland Presbyterian Church 
had been Presbyterian ministers, the fact that our Confession is 
a (very radical) "modification of the Westminster Confession," 
and that the ordinary ministrations of the Presbyterian pulpit 
are, like Dr. Crosby's doctrinal exposition in The Good and the 
Evil of Calvinism, orthodox Cumberland Presbyterianism. The 
practical result of all this is that nearly all who leave us, minis- 
ters and laity, for reasons worthy or unworthy, go, as a matter of 
course, as it would seem, into the Presbyterian Church. Now, 
of this tendency among our people it is not at all the writer's 
purpose to speak complainingly, but reference is made to it in 
justification of his purpose to present, in the discussion of the 
subject of "Decrees," what he most thoroughly believes a very 



94 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

great and radical and very important difference between the two 
systems as contained in the two Confessions. 

When the founders of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church 
made their first protest against the Westminster doctrines, that 
protest was against the teaching of Chapter III., hy which first 
blow they completely struck the key-stone from the Calvinistic 
arch. The first proposition of their first published doctrinal 
statement contradicts a fundamental statement of this Chapter 
III. A little later, when they came to construct a Confession, 
they saw that in every vital point Calvinistic teaching was out 
of harmony with the fundamental principles they had already 
adopted. The Confession of Faith of the Cumberland Presby- 
terian Church, as adopted in 1829, and still more fulry as revised 
in 1873, is in irreconcilable antagonism to the obvious and histor- 
ical sense of the Westminster Confession ; and this I desire so 
to exhibit that the difference may be fairly understood, the tend- 
ency of which will be finally to bring about, as I honestly be- 
lieve, a better understanding between the two churches. On the 
one hand, our own people should better understand how dis- 
tinctive is our doctrinal system ; and on the other, our brethren 
of the Mother Church should candidly hear objections to the 
Westminster system, and not hastily charge us with misrepre- 
senting it or wishing to exaggerate its less acceptable features. 

With an exception or two, the Calvinistic theology is a system 
of most rigid logical coherence of parts. These parts are 
grouped necessarily about the doctrine of the eternal decree of 
the third chapter, and all of them must stand or fall as it stands 
or falls. As another expresses it: " The third chapter, Of God's 
Eternal Decree, may be said to be the key-note from which its 
most characteristic doctrines follow in immediate sequence and 
harmony." Therefore, I entreat the reader to consider once 
more, calmly and deliberately, this chapter, in which lies the 
spinal column without which the Calvinistic system can not 
stand. "Revision" is the order of the day, and it is hoped that 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 95 

a fair statement of revision, as embodied in the Cumberland 
Presbyterian Confession, may avail something to the advance- 
ment of the truth. 

In fairness it is to be said that many Presbyterian ministers 
and laymen disclaim the doctrines that Arminians attribute to 
the Calvinistic eternal decree, as logically interpreted. They 
advocate revision, not, as a rule, acknowledging the errors of the 
Confession, but claiming that a re-statement is necessary u in 
order to tell the public what has been meant all the while by the 
Confession." By parity of reasoning another re-statement would 
be necessary to tell what the first re-statement meant, and so on. 
But the Westminster Confession was framed with much deliber- 
ation, every sentence, phrase, and word being used in a sense 
well understood, which sense is as readily ascertained to-day as 
when the Assembly concluded its work. Dr. Briggs, in his com- 
plaint that the Presbyterian Church is drifting, and his demand 
for a return to the true historic sense of the Confession, says : 
" There can be no doubt that the Westminster divines were Cal- 
vinists, that they held, in the main, to the Canons of Dort, and 
that they excluded Arminians and semi-Arminians from ortho- 
doxy. The Westminster definitions were made with this end in 
view. They are sharp, hard, polemical, and exclusive ; and, at 
the same time, apologetic, defensive, and guarding themselves 
from objections at every point. / do not know where any such 
careful and admirable definitions can be found. At the same 
time, it is my opinion that, in this respect, the Westminster 
divines went too far in their polemics. They sharpened their 
definitions into swords and spears that are as dangerous in the 
hands of unskillful Calvinists as they are to their Arminian 
foes. It is not surprising that these definitions have ever been 
regarded as hard and offensive, and that they have kept multi- 
tudes from uniting with the Presbyterian Church." (Italics 
ours.) 

The two schools of theologians in the Presbyterian Church — 



g6 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

the Liberalists and the orthodox Calvinists, or those who favor 
and those who oppose revision — differ widely in their interpre- 
tation of some of the statements of the chapter on Decrees, as 
will be indicated by the following contrasted statements : — 

Dr. Howard Crosby says: "Surely from these Scriptures we 
can safely say that any scheme of theology that makes God par- 
tial, resolving to furnish his grace only to some of those whom 
he invites, and willfully excluding others from all participation 
in it, is an unscriptural scheme, whatever may be its philosoph- 
ical merits." — Responsibility before the Gospel. 

Dr. A. A. Hodge says : " That as God has sovereignly predes- 
tinated certain persons, called the elect, through grace to salva- 
tion, so he has sovereignly decreed to withhold his grace from 
the rest ; and that this withholding rests upon the unsearchable 
counsel of his own will, and is for the glory of his sovereign 
power." — Comme?itary on the Co?ifession. 

It will appear, on further investigation of the subject, that Dr. 
Hodge and his school are the consistent Calvinists, frankly 
accepting the conclusions of their own premises, and explaining 
the Confession in its obvious, logical, historical sense. Dr. 
Crosby and his school explain away the Confession, in order to 
be evangelical; the former explain away the Scriptures, as it 
seems to us, to be consistent Calvinists. 

The divergence of the Calvinistic and the Cumberland Pres- 
byterian doctrinal systems, which takes rise in the third chapters 
of the two Confessions, leads to logical results widely different 
in the interpretation of other important doctrines, and our 
attempt to bring these differences clearly and fully before our 
readers will begin with a brief statement of the 

Meaning of the Decrees of God. 

In the last chapter reference was made to the harmony of the 
universe, the numerous adaptations of its parts, and the marks 
of design everywhere manifest, in proof that it must be the 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 97 

product of mind, of the Infinite Intelligence we call God. Fur- 
ther, we looked upon the world as full of proofs of the goodness 
of God, that the vast system of creation exists for the higher 
ends embraced in the happiness of creatures rational and sen- 
tient. As the earth is so insignificant, a member of the universe 
that has limitless expansion on all sides of us, we must believe 
that we are but a handful of the great rational creation and 
moral economy of which God is the certain and rightful sover- 
eign. Then, we must believe that, if this goodly frame is the 
product of a creative hand, it sprang from a purpose in the mind 
of God, which purpose we call his decree to create the world as 
it is, and to people it with such beings as are in it. If such a 
purpose was in the divine mind, it was always there, and so we 
believe God's decrees are eternal. Moreover, we must believe 
that he had a purpose, or will, as to how the creatures made in 
his own image should act; not necessarily that he decreed just 
what specific actions each one should perform, but the great 
principle or law of their behavior as beings intelligent and free. 
Thus the universe was a conception or ideal in the divine mind, 
the purpose to realize which is God's creative decree. From this 
definition of decree there will be no reasonable dissent. 

" The will of God that any thing exterior to himself shall take 
place, is called his determination, or decree." — Knapp's Theology. 

" By God's purposes (decrees) is meant his eternal and immut- 
able pleasure, will, or choice concerning all creatures and events 
or whatever comes to pass in time or eternity." 

The last definition has in it a very vicious element, in that it 
confounds the purpose, or decree, of God with his pleasure, will, 
or choice. We think of a divine decree as certainly efficacious, 
or never failing of fulfillment ; but numerous passages of Script- 
ure declare plainly and most positively that many things happen 
contrary to the pleasure of God. " Say unto them, As I live, 
saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the 
wicked ; but that the wicked turn from his way and live ; turn 
7 



o8 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



j 



ye, turn ye, from your evil ways ; for why will ye die, O house 
of Israel? " (Kzek. xxxiii. n.) Is it not amazing that, with the 
asseveration of God himself that he has no pleasure in the death 
of man, and the added pathetic importunity and remonstrance 
contained in this passage, that men, for the sake of a theory, 
will resort to the expedient of a secret decree by which the Lord 
brings about, as they affirm, the very thing he so solemnly 
declares contrary to his pleasure ! Will is used sometimes in the 
sense of pleasure or choice, sometimes in the sense of decree. 
It is the writer's will (pleasure) that Congress appoint a commis- 
sion to investigate and report the extent of the evil suffered an- 
nually by the nation in health, morals, and business because of 
the liquor traffic ; but he does not will (decree) that Congress do 
so, as such a decree would be futile ; but were he an emperor, he 
would so decree, and say to Congress, "Do thus." 

Calvinistic definitions of "decree" are, as a rule, illogical and 
unfair, since they add a limitation, that is no part of a definition, 
and such as begs the question at issue between the Calvinist and 
the Arminian. The oft-repeated one, from Buck's Theological 
Dictionary ', is an illustration : " The settled purpose of God fore- 
ordaining whatsoever comes to pass." Whether God has de- 
creed "whatsoever comes to pass," or whether men do many 
things contrary to the will of God, and which he, therefore, 
could not have decreed, is the very question at issue. A decree 
of God is, then, simply his purpose to do whatever he does, for 
we can not suppose the divine action separable from determina- 
tion to act. If God called Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, he 
determined (decreed) to call him. Whether the divine decree 
respects whatsoever comes to pass, is quite another and very dif- 
ferent question, before the discussion of which we may notice the 

Mode of the Efficacy of the Decrees of God. 

The event decreed is held to be dependent on the decree, and 
that it is made absolutely certain. " The very reason why any 
thing comes to pass in time is because God decreed it" (Fisher's 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 99 

Explanation of the Shorter Catechism). In accordance with the 
foregoing, Dr. A. A. Hodge says, " The one eternal, self-consist- 
ent, all-comprehensive purpose of God at the same time deter- 
mines the nature of the agent, his proper mode of action and 
each action that shall eventuate." Again, he says that "they 
(decrees) render every event embraced in them absolutely cer- 
tain." A divine decree relating to man's final destiny is usually 
called predestination, and, as it relates to the salvation or the 
perdition of the person, it is called election or reprobation. 
Thus, Calvin says: " Predestination we call the eternal decree of 
God, by which he has determined with himself, what he willed 
to be done with every man. For all men are not created in an 
equal condition {pari conditione) ; but eternal life is pre-ordained 
to some, eternal damnation to others. Therefore, as every one 
was formed for the one end or the other end, so we say that he 
was predestinated to life or to death." 

The point we desire specially noted is that the foregoing state- 
ments make the decree of God stand in the relation of an effi- 
cient cause to the thing decreed. " The reason why any thing 
comes to pass," as above quoted, " is because God has decreed 
it." "In the strict philosophical sense," says Dr. Reid, "I take 
a cause to be that which has the relation to the effect which I 
have to my voluntary and deliberate actions ; for I take this 
notion of cause to be derived from the power I feel in myself to 
produce certain effects. In this sense we say the Deity is the 
cause of the universe." It is the opinion of Isaac Taylor also, 
one of the ablest of metaphysical writers, that in itself the mind 
comes to recognize " the first and only cause of which it has any 
knowledge," and that later, " in following the leadings of math- 
ematical abstraction, and again in mastering the philosophy of 
the material universe, it establishes the fact of its homogeneous- 
ness with the Supreme Creative Reason" The human mind is a 
cause. The Infinite Mind is a cause. Man causes a house, a 
telescope to be ; God causes a universe to be. 



IOO DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

If, now, we admit, for the sake of the inquiry in hand, that 
God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass, including, of course, 
the desires, volitions, and actions of men, how does the decree 
cause the event, how does it bring it to pass ? For, since it is 
utterly incredible that every thing which comes to pass is an 
accidental correspondence with an eternal decree to bring about 
just such an event, we must believe, as I have attempted to 
show, that the procuring cause of the event la3 r in the decree, or, 
more strictly, in the mind putting forth the decree. If, now, I 
will to dismiss the train of thought engaging my mind, this voli- 
tional "down brakes" can bring about the event decreed. But 
if I will that the book nearest me lie at the farther end of my 
table, the decree is in no wise efficient — there is no conceivable 
nexus between the volition and the event willed. If, however, I 
will to rise and transfer the book to the designated place, the 
volition has an immediate efficiency to produce action in my 
body, and mechanical force transfers the book. Still, it is true 
that my volition is the cause of the change that took place, but 
it effected the change through what we call means. Similarly, 
if I decree that a mechanic shall build me a house, my decree is 
utterly inefficient to move his mind, but assurance of reasonable 
compensation will give efficiency to my decree, and the means in 
this instance we call a motive. 

So, whether the divine decree effects immediately the event 
decreed, or effects it through means, or " proximate causes," it is 
equally true that the decree is the cause of the event. It is the 
accepted Calvinistic doctrine that God brings his decrees to pass 
through the agencies that are said to bring about the events 
naturally. Since the decree embraces, however, all the means 
necessary to effect the event, the use of the means makes God 
none the less the author of the event. 

Says Dr. A. A. Hodge : " The decree of God is merely a pur- 
pose which he executes in his works of creation and providence. 
When it is said that all the decrees of God are certainly effica- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. IOI 

cious, it is not meant that they are the proximate causes of 
events, but that they render, under the subsequent economy of 
creation and providence, every event embraced in them abso- 
lutely certain." Again, " it (the decree) provides that free agents 
shall be free agents, and free actions free actions, and that a 
given free agent shall exist, and that he shall perform a certain 
free action under certain conditions." All that is very clear. 
The decree of God makes the "shall" in the performance of a 
free action under certain conditions. That is to say, God 
ordains the means to the end, namely, " certain conditions," 
which make the free agent's choice to perform the action an 
absolute certainty, "shutting up all other ways of acting." 
That is Calvinistic freedom — power to choose to do the thing 
decreed, without any power of contrary choice. If one were 
being swept over Niagara, choosing to make the awful plunge 
would be no relief to the one hopelessly borne to destruction. 
Choice without the power of contrary choice — the only theory 
of freedom logically consistent with the eternal causative decree 
— is "as perfect a fatality of choice," said Lyman Beecher, "as 
ever pagan, or atheist, or antinomian conceived." 

The Calvinistic Decree Makes God the Author of Sin. 

However it may appear to other minds, to the writer it is most 
clear that no metaphysics, no theory of morals, can free the Cal- 
vinistic doctrine of decrees from the charge of making God the 
author of sin — decreeing not only every wicked act, but decree- 
ing such a combination of " proximate causes " as will certainly 
cause the doomed agent to choose to do the act. But a few days 
ago, in this quiet town, a murderer suffered the penalty of death. 
Had it been shown to the court that a neighbor of the murderer 
had willed the death of the murdered man, and that he had pur- 
posely brought about a combination of circumstances that made 
it absolutely certain that the murderer would choose to commit 
the crime, and that any other choice would be impossible, the 



% 



102 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

court should have released the prisoner on trial, and have 
convicted and hanged the person really guilty. It was in view 
of this grave difficulty which hopelessly besets the Calvinistic 
doctrine of a divine decree, which, holds all human actions in the 
grasp of an absolute necessity, that Adam Clarke said : " He who 
leads another into an offense that he may have a fairer pretense 
to punish him for it, or bring him into such circumstances that 
he can not avoid committing a capital crime, and then hangs him 
for it, is surely the most execrable of mortals. What, then, 
should we make of the God of justice and mercy, should we 
attribute to him a decree, the date of which is lost in eternity, 
by which he has determined to cut off from the possibility of 
salvation millions of millions of unborn souls, and leave them 
under a necessity for sinning, by actually hardening their hearts 
against the influences of his own grace and Spirit, that he may, 
on the pretense of justice, assign them to endless perdition ? " 

That we have herein fairly represented the necessary relation 
of the will of God to the conduct and doom of the wicked, 
according to the doctrine that God has decreed whatsoever comes 
to pass, the following passage from the writings of the man 
whose name the system bears, may be cited in proof. Calvin 
says : "As by the efficacy of his calling toward the elect, God 
perfects the salvation to which he had destined them by his 
eternal decree ; so he has his judgments against the reprobate, 
by which he may execute his counsel concerning them. Those, 
therefore, whom he created for the reproach of life and the 
destruction of death, that they might be organs of his anger, 
and examples of his severity, that they may come to their end, he 
sometimes deprives of the power of hearing his word, sometimes 
makes them more blind and stupid by the preaching of it. . . . . 
Therefore, that Supreme Disposer makes a way for his predesti- 
nation, when he leaves those in blindness, without the communi- 
cation of his light whom he has reprobated." So, again, " Let 
this be the sum ; since the will of God is said to be the cause of 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 103 

all things, that his providence is appointed to be the ruler in all 
the counsels and works of men ; so that it not only works its 
power in the elect, who are governed by the Holy Spirit, but 
also compels the compliance of the reprobate." 

All must admit that in one sense the creative decree of God 
stands back of all other causes of human actions, for had God 
not created man, the actions would not have taken place. But. 
that by no means necessitates the idea that God has decreed all 
the actions of the rational creatures he decreed to make, but 
Calvinism insists that he did so decree, and thus makes him the 
primary cause in the sense of efficiency. Pictet, a Genevan Cal- 
vinist, in his work on Theology, bearing the imprint of the Pres- 
byterian Board of Publication, says: " Moreover, the immutabil- 
ity of the decrees incontestibly proves that there are no coiidi- 
tional decrees — that is, such as depend on a condition which 

may or may not be performed It is not, indeed, to be 

denied that the promises and the threatenings of God are condi- 
tional, but from these no conclusion can be drawn for conditional 
decrees. For promises do not determine the future event, as 
decrees do." 

The doctrine of the foregoing is exactly what Dr. Crosby 
declares the stumbling-block. He himself escapes the fatality 
of the system by simply going (coming) over to the doctrine of 
conditional decrees, declaring that " Pharaoh is hardened and 
Moses has mercy shown him after the two had either rejected or 
accepted grace. It is then God acts the potter, and does as he 
pleases with the clay, making one vessel to dishonor and the 
other to honor. If the allusion to the potter is to refer to any 
thing else than God's action upon men already decided in their 
position, then it must be interpreted as God's creation of some 
men to be damned. There is no alternative" (italics here mine). 
Certainly ; that is what Cumberland Presbyterians have all the 
while claimed to be the logical, inevitable conclusion of the 
admitted Calvinistic premises of the universal, unconditional 



104 



DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



decree of election and reprobation, without reference to any 
thing foreseen in the persons so elected or reprobated. Dr. 
Crosby says, speaking of justifying faith : " That first faith, the 
yielding to God's grace is man's own act, and not God's, and 
hence the formula in the gospel is, ' Thy faith hath saved thee.' 
It is a complete upsetting of common sense and a mystification 
of fruitless despair to put any thing behind the will of man 
when this faith is demanded of him by God." Certainly the 
theological world does move, when a recognized leader in a Cal- 
vinistic Church with a stroke of his pen demolishes what has 
been regarded as the stronghold of the doctrine of unconditional 
predestination, admits that the usual Calvinistic interpretation 
of Romans ix. involves the doctrine of God's creation of some 
men to be damned, and declares "Paul never taught such a doc- 
trine" 

Permissive Decrees no Reuef. 

To relieve the doctrine of universal decree from the odium of 
making God the efficient cause of sin, the advocates of the doc- 
trine propose to call the decrees in relation to evil permissive, as 
distinguished from decrees relating to good. Thus, Pictet, who 
is high Calvinistic authority, explains : " Besides the immutability 
and eternity of God's decrees, we must say something of their 
extent. This is so great, that nothing takes place in the world 
which God hath not decreed should take place ; still, it is certain 
that God is differently concerned in these events, according as 
they are either good or evil ; the good he hath decreed to do, the 
evil only to permit." The following seems very contradictory: 
"And yet, since nothing can happen contrary to the will of God, 
we say that he permits evil, though he in no way approves it; " 
which amounts to this, that evil is according to the will of God, 
" since nothing can happen contrary to the will of God," but 
" he in no way approves of it ; " which is to say that God in no 
way approves of that which is in accordance with his will ! 
Whether the universal decree necessarily locates in the will of 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 05 

God the efficient cause of evil, equally with the efficient cause of 
good, Pictet himself will thus testify, the italics being his own : 
" From this will be inferred what answer must be given to the 
following question — Whetlvet the end of every marts life is, with 
all its circumstances, so unchangeably fixed by the decree of God, 
that he can not depart out of life at any other period of time or 
by another kind of death, than that which actually falls to his 
lot ? For if all that happens in the world was known to God 
from eternity, and if nothing could be foreknown by God which 
he did not also decree should take place, it follows that the end 
of human life is fixed and determined by God." Thus Pictet 
teaches not only that the divine decree has the same efficiency 
in relation to evil in the lives of men, that it has to good, but 
also to all the circumstances that are the proximate causes of the 
evil, as to those that are the causes of the good. By this teach- 
ing, the victim of the murderer falls at the very moment, in the 
very place, by the hand, the pistol, the very ball, decreed by 
God, who foreknew it would all happen, but could foreknow it 
only because he had decreed it. Thus, the murderer and the 
murdered, in the fulfillment of an eternal decree, were carried 
straight from their birth, one to his tragic end upon the scaffold, 
the other to his fall by the wayside, the chain of circumstances 
in both cases being alike divinely predetermined of such a char- 
acter as inevitably to issue in the respective events. Such a 
theory leaves not a trace of a foundation for any just ideas of 
moral law, freedom, responsibility, or rewards and punishments. 
That the practical bearing of the doctrine of universal decree 
is pernicious must be manifest, and facts sustain the decision. 
It is related that a landgrave of Turing, being admonished that 
his vile conversation and wicked conduct were endangering his 
soul, made this defense : "Si prcedestinatus sum, nulla peccata 
poterunt mihi regnum ccelorum auferre ; prcescitus, nulla opera 
mihi illud valebunt confer re ; " which may be thus rendered into 
English : " If I am elected, no sins can snatch the kingdom of 



Io6 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

heaven from me ; if reprobated, no good deeds can avail to pro- 
cure it for me." Commenting on the foregoing circumstance, a 
writer justly says, "It is an objection (to Calvinism) not more 
old than common, but such, I must confess, that I have never 
found a satisfactory answer to it, from the pen of Supralapsarian 
or Sublapsarian, within the small compass of my reading." It 
is not to be denied that good men have truly believed the doc- 
trine here condemned as essentially pernicious in its practical 
tendency. Nor may it be denied that a man of high moral pur- 
pose may be sustained in a virtuous life, and be stimulated to 
extraordinary efforts for the good of mankind, by the conviction 
that he is one of Heaven's elected favorites, notwithstanding his 
belief that whatever is decreed must come to pass, and nothing 
else can come to pass. To others, it is, as Dr. Crosby declares, 
a " stumbling-block," and one over which multitudes stumble out 
of all good into all evil, for time and eternity. The writer has 
more than once remonstrated with a man endowed by nature 
with extraordinary mental and physical parts, whom strong 
-drink has made a wreck and a charge upon the public, and the 
remonstrance once drew from him the following significant 
though irreverent reply : " Well, now, see here ; what the Old 
Man Above says has to be, that 's got to be. He made you to be 
a sober man, and me to be a drunken fool, and that 's got to be." 
He was firm in his philosophy, which he thought himself to be 
practically illustrating, and to be a sufficient excuse for his 
course as to any worthiness or blame. Really, a philosopher 
could say the same — no less, no more, on looking over his record 
for a day, a year, or a life-time : " I could not possibly have done 
otherwise, for it was all eternally decreed just as it is, with the 
proximate causes that gave absolute certainty to every event. 
It is not necessary to take any concern about the future, for what 
has been decreed concerning me will certainly come to pass, and 
by no possibility can any thing else come." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 107 

SOURCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNIVERSAL DECREE. 

There can be no question, we think, that the fate of the 
heathen world is the source of the universal unconditional decree 
of the Calvinistic theology. The word fate (fatum) signifies 
" decree," that which is spoken, or commanded. Leibnitz says 
that Mohammedan fate means an absolute necessity, such that 
an event must come to pass, even though its cause be avoided. 
The Stoical fate found its necessity in the "course of things," 
which, it was held, could not possibly be resisted. " But it is 
agreed," adds Leibnitz, " that there is a fatum Christianum, a 
certain destiny of every thing, regulated by the foreknowledge 
and providence of God." 

Man is a finite creature. The horizon of his intellectual 
vision, like that of natural sight, is very limited. The idea of 
the creation of the universe by an intelligent first cause, if con- 
ceived at all, prevails nowhere outside of those who have derived 
it from the Scripture. Matter has been looked upon as eternal, 
and by many as having in itself the causes of all events. Hence 
was easily imbibed the doctrine of an endless series of causes 
and effects, a chain that bound every thing — human actions, 
words, and volitions included — in an absolute, inevitable neces- 
sity. Regarding their deities as themselves derived and as hav- 
ing material bodies, the heathen philosophers have held even 
their gods, in common with themselves, subject to the sway of 

fate, 

"The fixed decree which, not all heaven can move." 

Poetry and mythology associated fate with a vague conception 
termed " destiny." The Gnostics made sin an essential and 
eternal property of matter, and hence held that the contamination 
of a soul in a material body is fatal necessity. Spinoza taught 
materialism and pantheism, making God the soul of the world, 
and the only agent in the universe, and yet himself, though the 
author of both good and evil, holiness and sin, subject to an eter- 
nal necessity of acting as he doe v s. Descartes found his fatality 



108 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

in an atomic theory, making mental states the products of fortu- 
itous combinations of atoms, volitions but resultants of concur- 
rent material forces, and the universe destitute alike of design 
and a designer. French fatalism, which banished God, inscribed 
at the entrance to its cemeteries, " Death an Eternal Sleep," and 
baptized the land in blood, taught that nothing is but matter, 
and bowed to a fatality it found in an eternal succession of cause 
and effect in the operation of material laws. So in one way or 
another, all the nations who have not the Bible are accustomed 
to believe in some source of an inexorable necessity which, 
causes every event to be just as it is. 

In his Intellectual System of the Universe, Cudworth thus 
classifies the teachers of fatality : "First, such as asserting the 
Deity, suppose it irrespectively to decree and to determine all 
things, and thereby made all actions necessary to us; which 
kind of fate, though philosophers and other ancient writers 
have not been altogether silent of it, yet it has been principally 
maintained by some neoteric Christians contrary to the sense of 
the ancient Church. Secondly, such as suppose a Deity that, act- 
ing wisely, but necessarily, did contrive the general frame of 
things in the world ; from whence, by a series of causes, doth 
unavoidably result whatsoever is so done in it ; which fate is a 
concatenation of causes all in themselves necessary, and is that 
which is asserted by the Stoics, Zeno, and Chrysippus, whom the 
Jewish Kssenes seemed to follow. And, lastly, such as hold 
the material necessity of all things without a deity, which fate 
Epicurus calls the fate of the naturalists, that is, indeed, the 
atheists, the asserters whereof may be called also the Democrit- 
ical fatalists." 

Pictet urges, in support of the unchangeable fixedness of every 
event, that " the heathen were fully persuaded of this truth."' 
Certainly, the heathen were persuaded that such a fatality per- 
tains to every human life in its most trivial, as well as in its 
important affairs. The passage from Seneca cited by Pictet, to> 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 109 

■confirm a theological dogma by a dogma of heathen philosophy, 
is equally apposite as a proof of the unity of fatality in heathen 
philosophy and in the theological system of Pictet. Seneca 
saj^s : " No one dies too soon, seeing that he never could have 
lived longer than he did ; every one has his term fixed, which 
will always remain fixed where it is fixed, nor will any favor or 
endeavor make it longer." 

This bit of fatalistic philosophy, that a time is fixed for every 
one's death, before which he can not possibly die, and at which 
he must die, " cause or no cause," as the Mohammedans say, has 
had wide currency in our literature. We still say, sometimes 
seriously, sometimes jocularly, "he can not die till his time 
comes," an expression we pass along without thought of the 
meaning in it, as we pass familiar coins without noticing date, 
image, or superscription. " He that is born to be hanged will 
never be drowned," was current in England a long time ago, a 
sentiment Shakespeare ingeniously employs in The Tempest, 
making Gonzales, the honest old counselor, find comfort, in the 
height of the storm, in what he regards evidence that the Boat- 
swain is born to be hung: " I have great comfort of this fellow; 
methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him ; his complexion 
is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging ! Make 
the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advan- 
tage! If he be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable." 

Fatality Grafted Upon Christianity. 

Referring again to Cudworth's grouping of fatalists in three 
classes, it will be seen that his first class embraces those who 
suppose Deity " irrespectively to decree and determine all 
things," and, thereby, as that author asserts, "make all actions 
necessary to us." We are aware that many Calvinists deny the 
sequence Cudworth asserts, as flowing from a universal decree 
determining all events, and so deny fatality, where Cudworth 
asserts it. But if the necessity arising from " the course of nat- 



HO DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

ure," or from " the nature of matter," or from a " fortuitous 
concourse of atoms," be properly called fatality, why may we 
not, with L,eibnitz, call the necessity imposed by the eternal, 
universal decree, or the " certain destiny of every thing, regu- 
lated by the foreknowledge and providence of God," fatality y 
or, in the designation of L,eibnitz, fatum Christianum ? Surely, 
the decree of an omnipotent being — which decree is " the only 
reason why any thing comes to pass" — does not make events 
less certain or necessary than did the imaginary causes of the 
fatality of the heathen conception. If Calvinism teaches that 
(Pictet) " the end of every one's life, with all its circumstances, is 
so unchangeably fixed that he can not depart out of life at any 
other period of time, or by any other kind of death than that 
which actually falls to his lot," and the Stoics taught precisely 
the same, why should we call it fatality, when the necessity arises 
out of an eternal succession of cause and effect, as the Stoics 
taught, and deny that it is fatality when the necessity flows from 
an eternal decree of God, as Calvinism teaches? If it is fatality 
in one case it is in the other. Whatever is the practical bearing 
of the Stoic philosophy, that is logically the practical bearing of 
the Calvinistic doctrine of the divine decree of whatsoever 
comes to pass. Volition, indeed, there is, which consciousness 
asserts, but the fatwn Stoicum and the fatum Christianum equal- 
ly and utterly preclude the possibility of other volitions than 
those that come ; so that, according to both these fatalistic the- 
ories, our volitions are not less fixed in their character, and in 
their places in an eternally-ordained series of sequences, than 
the flinty molecules in a granite boulder. We do not dwell upon 
this subject because of any supposed ability to suggest a new 
thought where almost unlimited discussion has engaged all the 
powers of logic and learning; nor simply to insist on calling 
things by their right names, as we understand them, and by 
names odious to brethren who differ with us; but to come 
at an understanding of the very foundation on which rests the 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. in 

difference, a difference great and vastly important, between the 
system of theology taught by the Cumberland Presbyterian 
Church and that system against which it is a protest. 

Cudworth further asserts of deistic fatality that, " although 
philosophers and ancient writers have not altogether been silent 
of it, yet it has been maintained principally by some neoteric 
Christians, contrary to the sense of the ancie?it Church." Not to 
the ancient Church only, but, as we verily believe, to the Script- 
ures also, is this doctrine in the most positive antagonism. The 
apostles warned the Churches, as in Colossians ii. 3, to " beware 
lest any delude them by means of an empty and deceitful philos- 
ophy," in connection with which passage Bloomfield observes 
that Paul condemns, and cautions the Colossians against, the 
Grecian philosophy as sure to deceive them in regard to religion ; 
and the same writer quotes Warburton {Divine Legation) as say- 
ing that " the apostles always speak in terms of contempt or 
abhorrence of the Grecian philosophy," especially of the philos- 
ophy of the Gnostics and Stoics, both of whom were fatalists. 
The religion of the Gnostics, in the first centuries of Christian- 
ity, was a mixture of their philosophy and the teachings of the 
Bible, but so unsound and absurd that the " orthodox Fathers 
condemned their doctrines respecting grace, faith, election, and 
salvation as heretical and unscriptural." The effect of the 
apostles' warning in regard to the deceptive and dangerous 
tendencies of the fatalistic philosophies seems to have been to 
beget in the primitive Church a strong aversion to these philos- 
ophies, and even contempt for them. As a consequence, the 
writings of the Fathers show, as is asserted, no trace of fatalistic 
predestination before the time of Augustine. Calvin says (Inst. 
lib. ii., cap. 5, sec. 17), in defending his doctrines: " I know that 
they may quote Origen and Jerome in support of their exposi- 
tion ; and I, in my turn, could oppose Augustine to them." In 
commenting on this passage, a careful critic observes : "It ap- 
pears from this passage that Calvin himself was aware that of 



112 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

all the ancients Augustine was the only one favorable to his 
opinions." In the same connection Calvin charges Augustine 
himself with inconsistency in saying that the hardening and 
blinding (of the reprobate) do not refer to the operation, but to 
the prescience of God. 

Augustine the Author of the Doctrine. 

The introduction of the doctrine of predestination into 
Christian theology is usually ascribed to Augustine, who was 
born A.D 354. A passage in Cicero, relating to the worth and 
dignity of philosophy, is said to have first aroused his mind to 
earnest investigation, and for ten years he gave himself to the 
study of heathen philosophy, the simplicity of the Scriptures 
having no attraction for his taste. He became a professed Man- 
ichsean, which means a fatalist of the sternest type. Later he 
abandoned Manichseism, pronouncing it unsatisfying, and, after 
trying the Platonic philosophy for a short time, was led, through 
the influence of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, to embrace Chris- 
tianity. To the stud)' of the Bible he betook himself, hoping to 
find therein " those truths which he had already made himself 
acquainted with from the Platonic philosophy." By and by he 
abandoned Platonic Christianity, and professed a most radical 
conversion to the faith and experience that only the direct power 
of God could save him from the downward tendencies of the un- 
godly impulses of his nature, the struggles of mind attending 
which part of his life are set forth in the eighth and ninth books 
of his Confessions. 

Augustine has been regarded an indifferent scholar, critics 
asserting that, while he had studied the Latin authors well, he 
knew but little of Greek, and of Hebrew nothing. He was 
evidently a man of powerful impulses, his life exhibiting very 
great extremes and contradictions. When bad, he was " exceed- 
ingly dissipated." When he became a Manichaean fatalist, he 
avowed and taught his philosophy. Later, in Platonism his 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 113 

mind was led to the loftiest spiritual contemplations. When he 
abandoned Manichaeism he bitterly opposed it. When brought 
to a realization of his condition as a sinner, prostrate under a 
fig-tree, and agonizing in prayer for pardon, he heard (he said), 
as from the lips of a boy or maiden, the command, " Take, read," 
which he interpreted to mean that by opening a copy of Paul's 
epistles he would learn his duty from the first passage that met 
his eye, which passage proved to be Romans xiii. 13. When he 
controverted the doctrine of the British monk Pelagius, who 
denied sin and guilt in the race as a result of Adam's transgres- 
sion, and asserted man's self-determining power to enter on a 
life well-pleasing to God, Augustine went to the extreme of 
asserting the effect of the fall to be such that it is impossible for 
man to do any thing toward his salvation till after conversion, 
which he declared as much an act of God as the creation of a 
world is, and thence to the logical conclusion that, since only 
some were converted, God had eternally decreed to bestow con- 
verting grace on some, to withhold it from others, thus hinging 
man's destiny to everlasting good or ill on the absolute, uncon- 
ditional decree, instead of the Manichsean fate which he had 
previously avowed and taught. 

Some, however, ascribe to predestination an earlier appear- 
ance in the Church than the time of Augustine. Dr. K. De 
Pressense, in his Heresy and Early Christianity •, attributes it to 
Valentinus, a Gnostic of the Second Century. According to the 
mixture of heathen philosophy and Scripture taught by Valen- 
tinus, human history, before it is enacted in our world of misery 
and darkness, is unfolded in the higher sphere of the ideal. The 
tragedy of existence is played in three parts : " First in the high- 
est region, called the pleroma ; then in the intermediate sphere, 
and lastly upon earth." According to this mixture of the " most 
purely ethereal and most grossly material elements," everything 
that transpires on earth is absolutely fixed in every respect, 
8 



114 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

being determined in the antecedent ideal sphere, and thus most 
inexorably fated to be as it is. The Gnostics, though reckoned 
a heretical Christian sect, put God far away from the world, in 
what they called the " abyss," confounding him with it. Around 
the " abyss" is the "pleroma," inhabited by the aeons, who are 
emanations from God, and fulfill various functions. Of these 
aeons some Gnostics held that there were three hundred and 
sixty-five. The one who created the material world was Demi- 
urge. The redeemer of the world is the aeon called Christ. 
They divide the human race into three classes, all of one class, 
and as many of the second class as have received a certain influ- 
ence from the pleroma, being predestinated to salvation, and the 
remainder of the second class, with all the third, doomed to in- 
evitable annihilation. 

The IyONG Struggle with Philosophy. 

In later periods we find many distinguished leaders in the 
Church so mingling heathen philosophy and Christianity as to 
evolve fatalistic and otherwise pernicious theological systems. 
Thomas Aquinas, born in 1224, is a representative of the Scho- 
lastic Philosophy, uniting Idealism and Realism, which philos- 
ophy Aquinas married to his theology. Nothing more fully 
exhibits the long, severe struggle of the simple truth of the gos- 
pel with these vain philosophies than the abstractions which 
employed the powers of the great disputants of the Middle 
Ages, when, as one has expressed it, " The strong undercurrent 
was Platonism, but the Aristotelic Philosophy the tide that 
flowed on the surface, propelled by every wind and storm that 
vexed the Church." Philosophy had arrived at the conculsion 
that the only things in the universe are matter and form, and 
that form has an actual existence apart from matter, and, then, 
that forms of all things have pre-existence, and that they are 
the ends to which nature, in all its operations and products, is 
instinctively and unceasingly working ; and, so, that these eter- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 115 

nal forms — " ideas " Plato called them — of necessity determined 
exactly what every material existence should be. Now, some 
of the Christian scholars of those times were competent to the 
task of reconciling Christianity with such a philosophy by sim- 
ply transferring these eternal forms to the Divine Mind, calling 
them decrees, and finding there a creative energy that had to 
make the world exactly in the eternal molds. So theirs was a 
world under fatalistic necessity. It was the boast of the follow- 
ers of Aquinas, called Thomists, that their leader, "St. Thomas," 
had " rescued Aristotle from atheism, and secured him for ortho- 
doxy," which "reconciling" lay in identifying the eternal 
"forms" of the philosopher with the eternal " decrees " of God; 
and this made the Thomists Nominalistic in philosophy, Augus- 
tinian in theology. The process of " reconciling" theology with 
science — with cosmology, geology, evolution, etc. — is still in 
progress, and it is most manifest that with some of these peace- 
makers plain, scriptural theology is about all reconciled away. 
Yet man will study the problems of the world in which he lives, 
and rightly, and in the long run there has been a grand advance 
in the true reconciliation of our interpretations of God's two 
books of nature and revelation. That we have left behind us 
the abstractions of the Schoolmen — some of them so abstract as 
almost to make one dizzy in the effort to grasp them — let us 
thank God and breathe freer. The Church is certainly making 
progress in eliminating from her theology the heathen elements 
which crept in from the old philosophies, and if she does not 
bow to the materialistic tendencies of these times she will do 
well. Ignorance and error have caused countless wars, losses, 
and sufferings. " Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to 
heaven," said the greatest genius of his century, if not of all 
the centuries ; and the divine Teacher declares : " Ye shall know 
the truth, and the truth shall make you free." On the rock of 
truth only can man come to permanent rest and abiding good. 
Truth abideth forever. 



Il6 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



CHAPTER IV. 

DECREES IN THE CREEDS OF THE CHURCHES. 

^ I \HIS chapter is written with a sincere desire to arrive as 
clearly as possible at what is regarded very important 
truth. To the writer it seems of vital importance, at this junct- 
ure of affairs, that Cumberland Presbyterians stand fast in the 
liberty wherewith the truth has made them free, and that they 
be not in any wise entangled with the yoke of doctrinal bond- 
age imposed by the Westminster Confession. There are good 
people who greatly dislike what is usually termed discussion, 
much preferring that you state your own views, without refer- 
ence to what other people believe or teach. These good people 
forget that, by contrasting it with error truth is often much 
more readily seen in its simplicity, beauty, and consistency 
Tracing doctrines to their sources, comparing them with ad- 
mitted truths, and noting carefully their logical sequences, are 
helpful means of forming a correct judgment as to their sound- 
ness. Christ himself reasoned much with those who attended 
his instructions, and sat in the temple, hearing the doctors and 
asking them questions. Stephen disputed with those who 
assembled in the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, 
Alexandrians, Cilicians, 'and Asiatics, who "were not able to 
resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake." From the 
time Paul encountered the Athenians in the midst of Mars Hill, 
until this day, truth has been winning its way in the world 
through discussion, and thus will go on to whatever victories 
yet await it. President Garfield said that "unsettled questions 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 117 

have no mercy on the peace of nations," and another of our 
political sages said, with equal truth and significance, that 
"nothing is settled until it is settled right." The same things 
are equally true in regard to Churches ; for doctrinal error in a 
creed will be a disturbing element, and an unsettled question, so 
long as it is not settled right. Questions rooting in the doctrine 
of decrees, in 1837, rent the Presbyterian Church into nearly 
equal parts. The subsequent reunion in 1869, when many of 
the leaders of the former great discussion had passed away, is 
now followed by a grander, but more peaceful, upheaval of 
thought, and by a seeming determination to break the yoke of 
theological bondage endured for generations. 

Augustinian Predestination. 

It seems well established that through Augustine, early in the 
Fifth Century, the doctrine of predestination received its first 
public recognition in the Church. Various sects had existed,- 
Simon Magus being supposed to have represented one, whose 
doctrines, as those of the Basilidians and the Valentinians, were 
fatalistic, making man's eternal destiny the issue of some power 
over which he could exercise no possible control ; but these 
were all discarded by the Church as heretical. • When Pelagian- 
ism sprang up, denying what is called original sin, and teaching 
that every man has in himself the power of choosing good or 
evil, and so can obtain salvation by choosing it and living for it, 
and that predestination to life is always founded on this choos- 
ing on man's part, Augustine appeared as the bitter opponent of 
these views, his own doctrine being formulated thus : " By the 
sin of Adam human nature became physically and morally cor- 
rupt. From it evil lust has come, which, since it has become 
the inheritance of all men by generation, has come to be original 
sin, in itself damnatory, and prevails so much over the will of 
the natural man that he can no longer will what is good, as he 
should do out of love to God, but sins continually, however his 



Il8 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

actions may externally appear. From this corrupt mass of 
humanity God resolved from all eternity to save some through 
Christ, and leave the rest to deserved perdition. Therefore, 
divine grace, alone and irresistibly, works faith in the elect, as 
well as love and power to do good. The others, to whom the 
grace of God is not imparted, have no advantage from Christ, 
and fall into condemnation, even an eternal one." These Augus- 
tinian views were formally sanctioned b} r the decisions of Afri- 
can synods, and by Zosimus in the West; "although their 
author," says Mosheim, " himself felt how dangerous they might 
be made to morals, and was able to bring them forward in 
instruction in no other than an inconsequential way." The 
same author states that " the Augustinian doctrine of grace was 
never adopted in the Bast," and that "even in the West, where 
this doctrine had been ecclesiastically ratified, there were never 
more than a few who held to it in its fearful consequences. Its 
injurious practical effects could not be overlooked, and appeared 
occasionally in outward manifestation." 

Augustinian and Westminster Fatalism. 

From the foregoing it will be seen that Augustine made the 
salvation of " some " to depend on an eternal decree and irresist- 
ible grace; that " the rest," by the divine purpose, utter inability 
of will to any good, and the withholding of irresistible grace, of 
necessity "fall into condemnation, even an eternal one." Why 
that doctrine is not really as fatalistic as Manichaeism, or why 
it is a fatalism any better, it would be difficult to tell, especially 
if one were of "the rest" left to perdition. Rejoicing in the 
truth, we are glad to be able to quote such words as the follow- 
ing, from Dr. Crosby's tractate on Calvinism : " But Augustine, 
in his zeal against the errors of Pelagius, not only made the 
divine grace the foundation of man's salvation, but made it arbi- 
trarily discriminate between man and man, contrary to the 
Scripture testimony that God wishes all men to be saved 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 19 

(1 Tim. ii. 4). He thus denies man's ability to accept the divine 
grace. This Augustinian theology rendered man passive by 
making God to do all in the matter of salvation. The gospel 
invitation addressed to all was (by it) not meant for all, but only 
for those whom God would compel to accept it. The entreaties 
of God's word to sinners were thus rendered insincere, and our 
Lord's words, 'Ye will not come unto me that ye might have 
life,' should have been, 'God wills that ye should not come unto 
me that ye might have life,' or, ' God has not given you life 
whereby you can come unto me.'" Most certainly the theolog- 
ical world does move ! For ascribing to Augustinianism the 
very errors here charged upon it by Dr. Crosby, Cumberland 
Presbyterians have been a thousand times declared inconsistent 
and unjust. What is more remarkable still, Dr. Crosby charges 
upon the Westminster Confession the error of destroying the 
freedom of the will, which is exactly the same charge that Cum- 
berland Presbyterians have always brought against that creed. 
Though it comes late, this testimony from the other side is grat- 
ifying, not only, however, as some justification of our protest 
against the Westminster Confession, but as an indication that 
the day may not be distant when the two Churches will see eye 
to eye on all the great doctrines of salvation. 

"Calvin adopted the extreme views of Augustine," says Dr. 
Crosby, "and pressed them, as did Augustine, under the plea of 
logic, but it is just here, where these good men left God's word 
for their logical inferences, that they go astray. The Semi- 
Pelagians were a rebuke to Augustine, and justly so. The 
Arminians were still more justly a rebuke to the Calvinism of 
the Reformation. The Heidleberg and Westminster Confes- 
sions (and no symbols can compare with them for clear state- 
ment of Scripture truth), with all their excellence, have the 
philosophic defects to which we refer, and which are the dead 
flies in the apothecary's ointment." Now, in all kindness be it 
said, the very thing that Cumberland Presbyterians did with 



120 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Westminsterism was to cast the "dead flies" of the fatalistic 
philosophy out of the theological " ointment." 

Logical Inferences Not to be Denied. 

The so-called " philosophical defects" attributed, in the forego- 
ing concession, to the two Confessions named, seem to be that of 
pressing a doctrine to its " logical inferences." Yet, it seems in- 
credible that so scholarly a divine can mean to ask us to accept 
a doctrine, if to follow it to its logical inferences requires us to 
leave God's word, logical inferences must be true, if that of 
which they are inferences is true. If that law fails us, all is 
gone. Here, we may kindly suggest, a great deal of trouble has 
arisen, for Calvinists have written countless volumes to deny, 
and attempt to disprove, the "logical inferences" of their own 
premises. If God has unconditionally decreed whatsoever 
comes to pass, and any human being fails of salvation, it is not 
in the power of reason to avert the logical inference that God 
unconditionally decreed that the said human being should fail 
of salvation. The Calvinistic system utterly excludes conditional 
decrees, and conditions God's prescience on the absolute decree. 
He who accepts the premises of Calvinism must accept all its 
logical inferences, and if to follow these inferences is to leave 
God's word, then must we abandon the system with its infer- 
ences, or stultify reason. Truer words were never spoken than 
those of Bishop Tomlinson, touching this point : " But Calvin- 
ism, however modified or explained, while its characteristic 
principles are preserved, will always be found liable to the most 
serious objections ; and if those principles by which it is distin- 
guished as a sect of Christianity be taken away, it is no longer 
Calvinism. Calvinism, in reality, will not bear defalcation or 
admit of partial adoption. It has, at least, the merit of being so 
far consistent with itself. Its peculiar doctrines, considered as a 
system, are so connected and dependent upon each other that if 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 12 I 

you embrace one you must embrace all ; and if the falsehood of 
one part be proved, the whole falls to the ground." 

In which is to be found inconsistency, the Calvinism of the 
times of the Reformation, or in that of the Nineteenth Century? 
Calvin and his adherents, indeed, pushed their premises to their 
legitimate conclusions, to their " logical inferences," and, in so 
doing, were true to the laws of human reason, which laws de- 
nied, no basis of knowledge remains. A few sentences from 
Calvin's writings will exhibit what Dr. Crosby probably means 
by the " extreme views " he attributes to both Augustine and 
Calvin : — 

" Therefore, if we can not assign a reason why he (God) thinks 
his own worthy of mercy, except because it so pleases him, 
neither shall we have any other ground for his reprobating 
others, except his will." 

<( Many, indeed, as if they wished to repel odium from God, so 
acknowledge election that they deny that an 3^ one is reprobated ; 
but too ignorantly and childishly ; since election itself would 
not stand, unless opposed to reprobation. . . . Those, therefore, 
whom God passes over he reprobates ; and for no other reason 
except that he chooses to exclude them from the inheritance 
which he predestinates to his sons." 

Of the decree of reprobation he says : "I confess that it is in- 
deed a horrible decree; no one, however, will be able to deny 
but that God foreknew what would be the end of man, before he 
formed him ; and he therefore foreknew it, because he had so 
ordained by his own decree." 

" Let this be the sum ; since the will of God is said to be the 
cause of all things, that his providence is appointed to be the 
ruler in all the counsels and works of men ; so that it not only 
exerts its power in the elect, who are governed by the Holy 
Spirit, but also compels the compliance of the reprobate." 

" That the reprobate do not obey the word of God, when ex- 
plained to them, will be rightly imputed to the wickedness and 



122 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

maliciousness of their own hearts, provided it be at the same 
time added that they are- addicted to this wickedness because 
they are raised up by the just but inscrutable judgment of God, 
to illustrate his glory by their damnation." 

The foregoing statements are supposed to indicate some of 
Calvin's extreme views : That reprobation is a necessary corre- 
late of election, and that the two arise equally out of the good 
pleasure of God ; that God, indeed, foreknew the end of man, 
that man would sinfully rebel, and foreknew it because he had 
"so ordained by his own decree; " that God's power exerts itself 
not only in his providence toward the elect, "but also compels 
the compliance of the reprobate ; " that, while the reprobate do 
indeed reject the word of God through "the wickedness and 
maliciousness of their own hearts," yet "they are addicted to 
this wickedness because they are raised up by the just but in- 
scrutable judgment of God, to illustrate his glory by their dam- 
nation." "Extreme views," surely — extreme views of a Creator 
proclaimed " gracious " and " merciful," yet raising up some men 
by his just and inscrutable judgments to illustrate his glory by 
their damnation for being carried by omnipotent power to the 
very end for which they had been created ! What more extreme 
views could mortal mind conceive as to either the character of 
the God men are asked to worship, or the utter hopelessness of 
those reprobated for no other reason than because he chose "to 
exclude them from the inheritance to w T hich he predestinates his 
sons ? " But to these " extreme views " logical necessity drives 
those holding Calvinistic premises ! 

Now, if any good man is wounded by this presentation of a 
few of the hard sayings of Calvin, and will yet claim that, while 
he repudiates all such doctrines, he is a Calvinist, we must 
accept his repudiation of the extreme views, but equally must 
insist that "Calvinist" is, in his case, a misnomer. We desire, 
in this connection, to repeat and emphasize the fact that no Cum- 
berland Presbyterian can be a "moderate Calvinist." Calvinism 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 123 

can be expressed in a very few words : God has unchangeably 
decreed whatsoever comes to pass. His decree respecting what 
shall be the end of every man is called predestination; and pre- 
destination is called election as it respects those predestinated to 
life, and reprobation in respect to those predestinated unto 
death. And God hath not decreed any thing because he foresaw 
it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon known 
conditions. 

To the foregoing add the declaration of an enthusiastic advo- 
cate and competent interpreter of Calvinism : " Predestination is 
the all-ruling, all-conditioning soul of the Calvinistic system, 
upon which doctrine the admirable power, fullness, depth, and 
consistency of the system are directly grounded." 

Logical Sequences of Predestination. 

Predestination, then, is the all of the Calvinistic system as 
respects the destiny of human beings — the eternal decree fixing 
what the end of every man shall be, carrying him straight to the 
mark. To us, the following seem to be unavoidable logical 
inferences of the system as taught by the Reformers and by the 
Westminster Confession : 

1. That sin is according to the good pleasure of God. 

Calvin seems to admit as much in this declaration — " I 
acknowledge that this is my doctrine, that Adam fell, not by the 
mere permission of God ; but also by his secret counsel ; " and 
in this, " I confess that I wrote that the fall of Adam was not 
accidental, but ordained by the secret decree of God." 

To avoid this logical inference, Timothy Dwight makes this 
extraordinary shift : " To support the objection it must be shown 
that God can not will and accomplish the existence of voluntary 
agents, who, acting freely, shall, nevertheless, act in accordance 
with what is, upon the whole, his pleasure." That is to say, it is 
in the power of God to create beings with exactly such moral 
tendencies as will make it absolutely certain that they will do 



124 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

freely the evil that is embraced in his decrees, for which evil 
they are then to be eternally punished. Really, the vindication 
seems worse than the charge in the logical inference, for it not 
only makes God will the evil, but makes him create and endow 
agents for the specific purpose of freely doing the evil, to which 
agents other ways of acting are utterly shut up. 

2. That the human will acts under a necessity that is rightly 
called fatalistic. 

It may be asserted that wicked men choose the wickedness 
they commit. They certainly do so choose ; consciousness tes- 
tifies that. But Calvinism makes the actual choice the only pos- 
sible choice. According to Dwight, they are so created and 
endowed as to make it absolutely certain they will choose to do 
the things decreed by an omnipotent Being. Could one be more 
fated? 

Upon this point we are able to quote the opinion of Dr. 
Crosby, who thus charges the Westminster Confession with 
teaching what he would call necessitated volition : "In order to 
make God sovereign, these symbols make man a machine. 
They in terms declare man a free agent, but in their statements 
respecting God's sovereignty they deny this declaration. The 
will to which God appeals, beseeching it to turn to him, they 
state, is powerless to turn, unless God forces it to turn, thus 

destroying the whole meaning of the appeal Now, to say 

that God's grace acts behind man's will as a compelling power, 
in this acceptance, is to say that God accepts grace, and not 
man. By no process of reasoning can man be made a free agent 
in the matter, and the true declaration of the Westminster Con- 
fession (ch. iii., sec. i) is contradicted, namely: 'Nor is violence 
offered to the will of the creatures.' " [Dr. Crosby means that 
ch. iii., sec. i, of the Westminster Confession, is contradicted by 
ch. vii., sec. 3.] 

3. Limited atonement. For why should provision be made 
for the salvation of those whom God " eternally predestinated to 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. I 25 

death," as Calvin puts it, or whom he " passes by," as others 
more mildly say the same thing ? 

4. The salvation of only some infants (" elect infants ") dying 
in infancy. If any human being predestinated to death or " passed 
by " in God's merciful provisions dies in infancy, such a one is 
surely not saved. But how can any one know or assert or possi- 
bly believe that not one of the "passed by" has died, or that 
one such never will die, in infancy? Yet that is the sole hypoth- 
esis on which an advocate of unconditional predestination can 
admit the salvation of all dying in infancy. If God's elective 
decree is not based on any thing foreseen in those elected, why 
should we suppose all dying in infancy are elect ? There is sim- 
ply no place in the Calvinistic system for such a supposition. 
Dr. Briggs says : " It seems plain that the adjective ' elect' limits 
* infants,' as it does all other persons ; and that the Westminster 
Confession teaches that there are some elect persons among 
infants," etc., thus frankly admitting that the Confession of his 
Church does not teach the doctrine of the salvation of all dying 
in infancy. 

5. The certain final perseverance of all true believers, since an 
eternal decree of God predestinates them to life, and makes 
certain all the means necessary thereto. 

6. That this life is not probationary. 

It has long seemed to the writer that denial of probation to 
man here on earth is one of the most obvious logical sequences 
of the Westminster teaching. If an eternal decree has unchange- 
ably determined that A is of the elected, and B is of " the rest 
of mankind," who have been " passed by," can it be said, in any 
proper sense of the term, that either A or B is in a state of pro- 
bation ? The destiny of each is fixed ; and so is that of every 
human being, according to the Confession, since the angels and 
men predestinated and ordained, some to one class, some to the 
other, are " particularly and unchangeably designed," their 
number being " so certain and definite that it can not be 



126 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

increased or diminished." Beings thus " predestinated," " fore' 
ordained," and "particularly and unchangeably designed" by an 
eternal decree of an omnipotent God, are no more proba- 
tioners, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, than were Laz- 
arus and Dives when seen as separated by an impassable gulf. 
If God's omnipotent decree assigning men and angels particu- 
larly and unchangeably, some to the one class, some to the other, 
does not utterly preclude and exclude the predication of proba- 
tion of these men and angels, then one idea can not be logically 
exclusive of another. As destructive as must be this denial of 
probation, in its practical bearing on men's disposition toward 
an offered gospel, Dr. Briggs openly accepts it, saying: "The 
doctrine that this life is a probation, and that there is a private 
judgment at death are inseparable. Both are Arminian, and 
neither can be reconciled with Calvinistic principles." 

Dr. Briggs in his recent work ( Whither f ) charges the Calvin- 
ists of to-day with going beyond the Reformers, and certainly 
shows that in some doctrinal aspects they do ; while Dr. Crosby 
declares that the Reformers are the ones who were at fault in 
pushing their " logical inferences " too far. The seeming contra- 
diction is, doubtless, to be explained by the fact that in the days 
of Calvin, as now, those who held to predestination and cognate 
doctrines differed considerably in their views. The consistent 
Calvinists, as seems to us undeniable, are the hyper-Calvinists. 
A system of doctrine of any kind must be held responsible for 
its "logical inferences," and that, too, when pushed to "extreme 
views," provided that those views are " logical inferences." If 
we accept a geometrical proposition, we accept all its logical cor- 
ollaries, and to deny any of them would be to stultify ourselves. 
It has been very common, indeed, for Cumberland Presbyterians 
to be charged with the unfairness of attributing to Calvinists 
doctrines which they do not believe nor teach. As Cumberland 
Presbyterians discard Calvinism, it may be assumed that as a 
matter of course they view that system of doctrine in all its 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 27 

objectionable features, not excepting any truly logical inference 
it yields. This they are justly entitled to do so long as they 
state fairly the premises of the system, and in the sense put into 
the language by the authors of those premises. The writer is 
desirous at this point, not only to vindicate his own Church, but 
also to have our brethren of the other Church understand us. 
That all disputants upon our side have been always fair, is what 
can not be reasonably presumed ; that as a rule they have been 
or at least meant to be so, our personal knowledge of these dis- 
cussions does not permit us to doubt. 

Calvinism of the Reformers. 

As an illustration of how the Calvinistic system was inter- 
preted in the days of the Reformers, we subjoin what are known 
as The Lambeth Articles, proposed at Lambeth, England, Novem- 
ber 10, 1595, by Archbishop Whitgift, and adopted by the divines 
from Cambridge along with others assembled for the purpose of 
defining the system : 

"1. God from eternity hath predestinated certain men unto 
life ; certain men he hath reprobated. 

" 2. The moving or efficient cause of predestination unto life 
is not the foresight of faith, or of perseverance, or of good 
works, or of any thing that is in the person predestinated, but 
only the good will and pleasure of God. 

" 3. There is predetermined a certain number of the predesti- 
nate, which can be neither augmented nor diminished. 

" 4. Those who are not predestinated to salvation shall be nec- 
essarily damned for their sins. 

"5. A true, living and justifying faith, and the Spirit of God 
justifying, is not extinguished, falleth not away, it vanisheth not 
away in the elect, either totally or finally. 

"6. A man truly faithful — that is, such a one who is truly 
endowed with a justifying faith — is certain, with the full assur- 



128 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

ance of faith, by the remission of his sins, of his everlasting sal- 
vation by Christ. 

" 7. Saving grace is not given, is not granted, is not communi- 
cated to all men, by which they may be saved if they will. 

" 8. No man can come unto Christ, unless it be given unto 
him, and unless the Father shall draw him ; and all men are not 
drawn by the Father, that they may come to the Son. 

"9. It is not in the will or power of every one to be saved." 

These Articles were not indeed authoritative, and are cited 
only in proof of the interpretation of Calvinism in the early 
days of its history. They were so displeasing to the Queen that 
she commanded the Archbishop speedily to recall and suppress 
them, " which was performed with such care and diligence," says 
an historian, " that a copy of them was not to be found for a long 
time afterward." Are not all these points embraced, in phrase- 
ology somewhat different, in the Westminster Confession ? 

The Church of England is largely opposed to the Calvinistic 
system, some of the strongest protests against it which have ever 
appeared having come from her learned divines. Bishop Sumner, 
commenting on the express and comprehensive command, " Go 
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost," observes " that these words imply 
a benefit placed within the power of the whole nation generally, 
and not of a select part from each nation, can not at least be 
denied on the face of the words themselves, which convey the 
impression that Christianity was to be gradually diffused and the 
offer of the gospel made without reserve." Speaking of the 
Calvinistic tenet of man's inability to do any thing until that call 
is received which must always be effectual {gratia irresistabilis) , 
Sumner says : " No one can be blind to the dangerous tendency 
of this doctrine ; no one, I should imagine, would incur the haz- 
ard, except from an overruling sense of duty, of thus promoting 
rashness, supineness, or despair. In St. Paul's mode of address- 
ing the churches, in several passages he speaks of a co-operation, 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 129 

or at least an exertion on man's part, which is incompatible with 
his being a mere patient, working no more than dead, senseless 
matter in the artificer's hands, .... as when he encourages the 
Philippians to use their own power earnestly, from a conscious- 
ness of the grace by which they would be supported, ' Work out 
your own salvation, for it is God that worketh in you.' ' 

Decrees in the Thirty-nine Articles. 

Article xvii. of this Symbol of the Church of England and of 
the Episcopalians of the United States, " Of Predestination and 
Election," reads thus: " Predestination to life is the everlasting 
purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world 
were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, 
to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen 
in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to ever- 
lasting salvation, as vessels made to honor. Therefore, they 
which be endued with such an excellent benefit of God be called 
according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season ; 
they through grace obeying the calling ; they be justified freely ; 
they be made sons of God by adoption ; they be made like the 
image of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ ; they walk relig- 
iously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain 
to everlasting felicity." 

There is no allusion in the foregoing, and none in the remain- 
ing sections, to the reprobation of any portion of humanity, nor 
to their being passed by. Declaring the doctrine (our election 
in Christ) to be " full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable com- 
fort to godly persons," the Article adds, " So, for curious and 
carnal persons, lacking the spirit of Christ, to have continually 
before their eyes the sentence of God's predestination, .... is 
a most dangerous downfall, whereby the devil doth thrust them 
either into desperation, or into wretchedness of most unclean 
living, no less perilous than desperation." 

Bickersteth (Questions on the Thirty-nine Articles) says that the 
9 



I30 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

words " to life " are inserted " to exclude the doctrine of reproba- 
tion." In further explanation of the doctrine of election as held 
by that Church, he adds that to be" chosen in Christ " means 
" only that God for his part had chosen them to be heirs of sal- 
vation, provided they on their part would * put on the breast- 
plate of faith and love,' and so make their calling and election 
sure." 

An eminent divine of the Episcopal Church declares that " by 
virtue of the dispensation of grace, under which human nature 
is now placed, no man is reprobate until he makes himself so 
by deliberate rejection of the grace of God, by driving from his 
soul the Holy Spirit, the source of all the good that is in man," 
and that "the actual present state of human nature, through the 
mediation of Christ, and by the gift of the Holy Spirit, is that 
of probation, not of reprobation." 

Every human being, a prisoner of hope, raised in Christ to a 
gracious probation, called of God to lay hold on eternal life 
freely and sincerely offered to all by the all-merciful Father who 
willeth not the death of any — such is the gospel we preach. 
These are the obvious, comforting gospel truths, pressed upon 
the judgment and consciences of men. 

" We should," says Barrow, " adhere to those plain and posi- 
tive declarations whereby God representeth himself seriously 
designing and earnestly desiring that all men should come to the 
knowledge of the truth; that none should perish, but that all 
should come to repentance, not doubting but that his declared 
mind and his secret providence, although we can not thoroughly 
discern or explain their consistenc}^, do yet really and fully 
conspire." 

Decrees in the Canons of Dort. 

As another illustration of the " extreme views " discarded and 
deprecated by Calvinists of the Dr. Crosby school, but asserted 
by more consistent Calvinists, as we must think them, to be 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 131 

" logical inferences " of admitted Calvinistic premises, we cite 
the summary of the Articles of the Synod of Dort, as it is given 
by Tilenus, and so far as it relates to the five points controverted 
between Calvinists and Arminians. This summary certainly 
shows that some men have been capable of a rugged faith 
indeed, if it could still trust and worship a God described as so 
decreeing in reference to his creatures : 

"1. That God, by an absolute decree, hath elected to salvation 
a very small number of men, without any regard to their faith 
or obedience whatsoever ; and secluded from saving grace all the 
rest of mankind, and appointed them, by the same decree, to 
eternal damnation, without any regard to their infidelity or 
impenitency. 

"2. That Jesus Christ hath not suffered death for any other, 
but for those elect only ; having neither had any intent nor com- 
mandment of his Father to make satisfaction for the sins of the 
whole world. 

" 3. That by Adam's fall his posterity lost their free will, being 
put to an unavoidable necessity to do, or not do, whatsoever they 
do or do not, whether it be good or evil, being thereunto pre' 
destined by the eternal and effectual secret decree of God. 

"4. That God, to save his elect from the corrupt mass, doth be- 
get faith in them by a power equal to that whereby he created 
the world and raised up the dead; insomuch that such unto 
whom he gives that grace can not reject it, and the rest, being 
reprobate, can not accept it. 

"5. That such as have once received that grace by faith can 
never fall from it finally or totally, notwithstanding the most 
enormous sins they can commit." 

" The Canons of the Synod of Dort constitute," says Professor 
Shedd {History of Christian Doctrine), " a highly important 
portion of the Calvinistic symbolism." These Canons, ninety- 
three in all, " combat the principal tenets of the Arminians, and 
develop the Calvinistic system," says Shedd, who adds that 



132 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

the Reformed Churches in various countries, and the Puritans in 
England, " received these Canons as the scientific and precise 
statement of Christianity." The English Episcopal Church 
rejected these Canons of Dort. It may be well supposed, indeed, 
that the circumstances giving rise to this Calvinistic symbol 
would produce a radical protest against Arminianism, which pro- 
test implies the greatest extreme possible in the direction of Cal- 
vinism. Yet, may it not be truthfully said that these harsh ut- 
terances all lie within the logical sequences of the Calvinistic 
premises? They are most assuredly but Calvinism " developed 
into precise and scientific statement." The foregoing summary 
may employ phraseology not justified by the Canons, but the 
ideas are necessarily in any true, scientific statement of Calvinism. 
Dr. Reid, the metaphysician, states that he was at first a firm 
believer in Locke's theory- of ideas, but finding that conse- 
quences resulted from that theory " which gave him more trouble 
than the supposition of the non-existence of matter," he began 
to examine into the foundation principles of Locke's philosophy, 
and so to reject the hypothesis altogether. The trouble is with 
the fundamental premise of Calvinism, which premise adopted 
into our theological system, it is folly to deny the " logical infer- 
ences," or to attribute injustice and ignorance to those who de- 
clare the system chargeable with its logical sequences. Speaking 
of the evil tendencies of the Calvinistic system, Bishop Sumner 
declares : " It matters not that a pious Calvinist disclaims the 
natural results, or an acute disputant can explain them away : it 
is notorious that the illiterate enthusiast believes, and the sinner 
flatters himself with expecting, that, if he is one of the elect, he 
shall somehow or other be finally snatched out of the fire ; and, 
if he is not, that no exertions of his can ever avail. Thus the 
real conclusion and the practical evil of the doctrine of election 
meet together." " I do not," he adds, " consider this as a matter of 
argument, but of historical experience." He refers for illustra- 
tion to the passage in Burnet's History of the Reformation : 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 33 

" The Germans soon saw the ill effects of the doctrine of decrees. 
Luther changed his mind about it, and Melanchthon wrote 
openly against it ; and since that time the whole stream of the 
Lutheran Churches has run the other way ; but both Calvin and 
Bucer were still for maintaining the doctrines, only they warned 
the people not to think much about them, since they were secrets 
that men could not penetrate into. Hooper and many other 
good writers did often exhort the people from entering into these 
curiosities ; and a caveat to the same purpose was put into the 
Article about predestination." If Calvinism, then, has the tend- 
ency here ascribed to it, how must we think of it, if we apply 
the test set up by the infallible Teacher : "A good tree can not 
bring forth evil fruit?" This Calvinistic tree brings forth evil 
fruit; therefore — what? But theorists seem adequate to almost 
any task in the way of denying the " logical inferences," or of rec- 
onciling the pernicious consequences of their systems, in which 
art heathen philosophy showed no less skill than do theologians 
of some schools, as may be illustrated by the following passages 
from the fatalistic poet Manillus : 

" The fates rule the world ; arts and manners are alike given 
to created beings, and vices, and misfortunes, losses and gains in 
their affairs. None can want what is given him, nor can any 
have what is denied. Lo ! parents destroy their children, and 
children their parents, and armed brethren inflict on each other 
mutual wounds. These are not the crimes of men; they are 
forced to such actions, and to incur their penalties and the lacer- 
ation of their members." To this, his own statement, the poet 
opposes what follows — a "yet not so as thereby": "Yet, crimes 
derive no defense from this statement, nor does it defraud virtue 
of its reward. . . . So, the praise of human merit is so much the 
greater that it comes from the will of Heaven, and, on the other 
hand, we hate those who do wrong, the more, because they are 
created for crime and punishment." Now, we must say of this 
fatalistic philosophy (as we should say of every fatalistic system 



134 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

of theology, which, by an eternal decree or any other agency, 
absolutely and unchangeably determines whatsoever comes to 
pass) that it utterly defies all honest effort at distinction between 
right and wrong in human conduct, and leaves not the semblance 
of a foundation on which to predicate the idea of moral govern- 
ment over rational creatures. Such a system, though Christian 
it calls itself, claiming to vindicate the glory of God by making 
whatsoever comes to pass an inevitable issue of his own abso- 
lute, eternal decree, in very truth robs him of the glory springing 
from the obedience, love, and adoration of a vast economy of 
free moral agents, created in his own image, loving, obeying, and 
adoring the Creator in whom they perceive all moral excellence. 
The reader is again reminded that these paragraphs are not an 
intended discussion of what Dr. Crosby calls the " Evil of Cal- 
vinism," our purpose being simply to emphasize that protest 

(against the Calvinistic system) with which the Cumberland 

i ... 

Presbyterian Church began its career, to which it has uniformly 

stood firm, which protest it should continue to maintain so long 
as the cause which first prompted it continues to exist. Most 
of all have Cumberland Presbyterians been charged with mis- 
representation for insisting that the Westminster Confession 
teaches inferentially the (unpopular) doctrine of 

"Infant Damnation." 

To this subject Dr. Briggs ( Whither f ) devotes over a dozen 
pages, to prove, not that Cumberland Presbyterians make a false 
charge, but that the Confession of Faith teaches exactly what 
Cumberland Presbyterians have always claimed it teaches, and 
that such is, as he shows beyond a reasonable doubt, what all the 
framers of the Confession understood it to teach, and meant to 
have it teach. Dr. Briggs also, at this point, charges the Presby- 
terian Church with forsaking the historic meaning of their 
Standards, adding; "This movement seems to have been begun 
by Dr. Archibald Alexander. In his youth he was greatly influ- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 135 

enced by the Baptists in Virginia; and when President of 
Hampden and Sidney College, in 1797-99. n ^ was greatly 
troubled about infant baptism, and for a while discontinued its 
use. These influences led him to abandon the Calvinistic doc- 
trine of the damnation of non-elect infants." Dr. Briggs quotes 
Dr. Prentiss as saying, in The Presbyterian Review, that "the 
change from the position generally held by Calvinistic divines 
at the beginning, or in the middle of the Seventeenth Century, 
to the ground taken by Dr. Charles Hodge, in 187 1, in his Sys- 
tematic Theology, is simply immense;" that it "amounts to a 
sort of revolution." " It is, however, co?itrary to the Westmin- 
ster Confession of Faith," says Dr. Briggs, "to believe in the sal- 
vation of all infants, or to believe in the salvation of any of the 
heathen who are capable of being outwardly called by the min- 
istry of the word." Again : " We are able to say that the West- 
minster divines were unanimous on this question of the salva- 
tion of elect infants only. We have examined the greater part 
of the writings of the Westminster divines, and have not been 
able to find any different opinion from the extracts we have 
given. The Presbyterian Churches have departed from their 
Standards on this question, and it is simple honesty to acknowl- 
edge it. We are at liberty to amend the Confession, but we 
have no right to distort it, and to pervert its meaning." It is 
due to Dr. Briggs to say that he courageously and avowedly dis- 
cards his own Confession, saying: "We do not hesitate to ex- 
press our dissent from the Westminster Confession in this 
limitation of the divine electing grace. We are of opinion that 
God's electing grace saves all infants, and not a few of the 
heathen." Now that their interpretation of the Westminster 
Confession touching the doctrine of infant salvation is fully 
sanctioned by so eminent a scholar of the Presbyterian Church 
as Dr. Briggs, Cumberland Presbyterians may feel reassured in 
regard to the justice of their interpretation of that article in 
the Confession, and equally in regard to their protest to the 



136 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

article as thus interpreted, since not only Dr. Briggs is fully with, 
us in interpreting and rejecting the "elect infants" article, but 
also that, as asserted by Dr. Prentiss, there has been a "revolu- 
tion in theological opinion " along the very line of our departure 
from the Westminster symbols. Let us, then, in conclusion, 
state more definitely and authoritatively the 

Cumberland Presbyterian Doctrine of Decrees. 

By the end of three and a half years, the first organized Cum- 
berland Presbyterian presbytery had grown to a synod, composed 
of three presbyteries. The "brief view" of doctrines and disci- 
pline approved at the first meeting of this synod is, so far as 
known to us, the first doctrinal statement put forth by the Cum- 
berland Presbyterian Church. "As regards the doctrine of pre- 
destination and election, our fathers declared in the 'brief view' 
that they were pleased neither with the application that rigid 
Calvinists nor Arminians make of it. They thought that the 
truth of this, as well as of many other points of divinity, lies 
between the opposite extremes."* The "view" embraced these 
declarations as points of dissent from the Westminster Confes- 
sion: 

First — That there are no eternal reprobates. 

Second — That Christ died, not for part only, but for all man- 
kind. 

Third — That all infants dying in infancy are saved through 
Christ and sanctification of the Spirit. 

Fourth — That the Spirit of God operates on the world, or as 
co-extensively as Christ has made the atonement, in such a man- 
ner as to leave all men inexcusable. 

These propositions are expressed in language that scarcely 
admits of being misunderstood. They embody doctrines funda- 
mental, as to the relation of the gospel to the world, and vastly 

* Origin and Doctrines of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, by E. 
B. Crisman, D.D. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 137 

significant as determining factors in a theological system. These 
views, held in common, as it seems, by the members of the 
newly formed synod, had doubtless been frequently presented, 
defended, and enforced in the preaching so signally blessed in 
the years immediately preceding, so that they had come to be 
the well-understood views of the Cumberland Presbyterians. 
They are the Creed that antedates a Confession. In addition to 
the issue of this doctrinal statement, the synod appointed a com- 
mittee "to prepare a Confession of Faith, Discipline, and Cate- 
chism, in accordance with the avowed principles of the Church." 
This committee "merely modified the Westminster Confession 
of Faith, expunging what they believed unscriptural, and sup- 
plying what they thought scriptural."* The committee's re- 
port, submitted to the synod at its next annual meeting, was 
approved and adopted as the Confession of Faith of the Church. 
It is not likely that this first revision of the Westminster Con- 
fession eliminated all the logical sequences of the rejected Cal- 
vin istic premises. With some amendments, the report of the 
committee was unanimously adopted — a fact quite significant of 
a well-understood rejection of the Calvinistic doctrine of decrees. 
The first General Assembly of the Church, held at Princeton, 
Ky., 1829, still further revised the revision adopted by the synod 
in 1814, and published it as "The Confession of Faith of the 
Cumberland Presbyterian Church," in which occurs the follow- 
ing statement of (Chapter III.) "The Decrees of God:" 

" I. God did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own 
will, determine to act or bring to pass what should be for his 
own glory. 

" II. God has not decreed any thing respecting his creature 
man, contrary to his revealed will, or written word, which 
declares his sovereignty over all his creatures, the ample provis- 
ion he has made for their salvation, his determination to punish 



* Origin and Doctrines of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, by E- 
B. Crisman, D.D. 



I38 DOCTRINES .AND GENIUS OF THE 

the finally impenitent with everlasting destruction, and to save 
the true believer with an everlasting salvation." 

How Our Fathers Viewed the Subject. 

To the foregoing chapter on Decrees is appended, partly, no 
doubt, as explanatory of the brevity of the chapter, a lengthy 
note, of such value for clearness and doctrinal soundness, as to 
deserve preservation, especially as evidence of the views of our 
fathers on the subject under consideration. This note, with 
unessential parts omitted, we here insert : 

" We think it better, under the head of Decrees, to write what 
we know to be incontrovertible from the plain word of God, 
than to darken counsel by words without knowledge. We are, 
therefore, free to acknowledge that in our judgment it is easier 
to fix the limits which man should not transcend, on either 
hand, than to give an intelligent elucidation of the subject. We 
believe that both the Calvinists and Arminians have egregiously 
erred on this point ; the former by driving rational, accountable 
man into the asylum of fate; the latter by putting too much 
stress on man's works, and leaving too much out of view the 
grace that bringeth salvation, and thereby cherishing those legal 
principles that are in every human heart. We think the i?iter- 
mediate plan, on this subject, is nearest the whole truth. For 
surely, on the one hand, it must be acknowledged, the love of 
God, the merits of Christ, and the operations of the Holy Spirit, 
are the moving, meritorious, and active causes of man's salva- 
tion; that God is a sovereign, having a right to work when, 
where, how, and on whom he pleases; that salvation, in its 
device, in its plan, and in its application, is of the lyord ; and 
that without the unmerited agency and operation of the Spirit of 
God, not one of Adam's race would or could ever come to the 

knowledge of the truth But as it respects the salvation 

of the soul, God as a sovereign can only elect, or choose, fallen 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 139 

man in Christ, who is the end of the law for righteousness to 
every one that believeth. But it appears to us incontestible from 
God's word that God has reprobated none from eternity. That 
all men become legally reprobated by transgression is undeni- 
able, and so continue until they embrace Christ Reproba- 
tion is not what some suppose it to be, viz. : a sovereign deter- 
mination of God to create millions of rational beings, and, for 
his own glory, damn them eternally in hell, without regard to 
moral rectitude or sin in the creature. This would tarnish the 
divine glory, and render the greatest, best, and most lovely of 
all beings most odious in the view of all intelligences. When 
man sinned, he was legally reprobated, but not damned. God 
offered and does offer the law-condemned sinner mercy in the 
gospel; he having from the foundation of the world so far 
chosen mankind in Christ, as to justify that saying in 1 Tim. iv. 
10, ' Who is the Savior of all men, especially of them that 
believe.' .... For God declares in his word that Christ died for 
the whole world ; that he offers pardon to all ; that the Spirit 
operates on all, confirming by an oath that he has no pleasure in 
the death of sinners. Every invitation of the gospel either 
promises or implies aid by the divine Spirit. The plan of the 
Bible is grace and duty: God calls (grace), sinners hearken dili- 
. gentry (duty) ; God reproves, sinners turn; God pours out his 
Spirit, sinners resist not the light, but improve it ; God invites, 
Wicked man, forsake your ways, your thoughts, and turn to the 
Lord (duty), and God will have mercy on you (grace), and God 
will abundantly pardon (grace)." 

Without further comment thereon, we may be allowed to say 
that the foregoing seems to us to represent man's relation to the 
offers of the gospel, according to the obvious meaning of the 
Scriptures, and that it is conformable to the experience of those 
who have believed on Christ, and attained to a comfortable 
assurance of salvation. 



140 



DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

The Confessions Compared. 



As revised and adopted in 1883, the Confession of Faith sets 
forth the ' doctrine of decrees, as held by Cumberland Presbyte- 
rians, in the following short paragraphs, which are here brought 
into juxtaposition with sections from the Westminster chapter 
relating to the same subject, the more clearly and efficiently to 
illustrate the material and radical departure of our theology from 
what is taught in the old symbols : 



Westminster Confession. 

Of Decrees. 

Chap. 3. God from all eternity 
by the most wise and holy counsel 
of his own will freely and unchange- 
ably ordained whatsoever comes to 
pass ; yet so as thereby neither is 
God the author of sin, nor is vio- 
lence offered to the will of the creat- 
ure, nor is the liberty or contin- 
gency of second causes taken away, 
but rather established. — Sec. 1. 

Although God foreknows whatso- 
ever may or can come to pass upon 
all supposed conditions ; yet hath 
he not decreed any thing because 
he foresaw it as future, or as that 
which would come to pass upon 
such conditions. — Sec. 2. 



By the decree of God, for the 
manifestation of his glory, some 
men and angels are predestinated 
unto everlasting life, and others 
foreordained to everlasting death. — 
Sec. 3. 

The angels and men, thus predes- 
tinated and foreordained, are partic- 
ularly and unchangeably designed; 
and their number is so certain and 
definite that it can not be either in- 
creased or diminished. — Sec. 4. 

The rest of mankind God was 
pleased, according to the unsearch- 
able counsel of his own will, where- 



Cumberland Presbyterian 
Confession. 

Of Decrees. 

Chap. 3. — God, for the manifesta- 
tion of his glory and goodness, by 
the most wise and holy counsel of 
his own will, freely and unchange- 
ably ordained or determined what 
he himself would do, what he would 
require his intelligent creatures to 
do, and what should be the awards, 
respectively, of the obedient and 
the disobedient. — Sec. 1. 

[The decrees of God are his pur- 
pose, whereby, according to the 
counsel of his own will, he hath 
foreordained what shall be for his 
own glory ; sin not being for God's 
glory, therefore he hath not decreed 
it. — Answer to Question 7 of the 
Catechism^ 

[God executes his decrees in the 
works of creation, providence, and 
grace. — Answer to Question 8 of the 
Catechism^ 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 14 1 

"by he extendeth or withholdeth 
mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory 
of his sovereign power over his 
creatures, to pass by and to ordain 
them to dishonor and wrath for 
their sin, to the praise of his glori- 
ous justice. — Sec, 7. 

The doctrine of this high mys- Though all divine decrees may 

tery of predestination is to be han- not be revealed to men, yet it is 

died with special prudence and care, certain that God has decreed noth- 

that men attending the will of God ing contrary to his revealed will or 

revealed in his word, and yielding written word. — Sec. 2. 
obedience thereunto, may, from the 
certainty of their effectual vocation, 
be assured of their eternal election. 
— Sec. 8 in part. 

The doctrine of decrees as set forth in the Cumberland Pres- 
byterian Confession seems easily understood, and to embrace 
only what is conformable to enlightened judgment and to the 
obvious meaning of the Scriptures as a whole, (a) God's decrees 
are in accordance with the most wise and holy counsel of his 
own will, (b) They are put forth freely — attended by what we 
mean by volition absolutely uncoerced, (c) They are unchange- 
able, for an infinitely wise being could have no reason for chang- 
ing his purpose, (d) They are conditioned on the manifestation 
of his glory and goodness. They must, therefore, embrace the 
actual or prospective existence of creatures rational and sentient 
to whom his glory and goodness would be thus manifested. It 
is a matter of fact that in the works of God men do behold man- 
ifestations of his glory and goodness. John declares, " God is 
love." Plato says, " God is beauty and love." What the philos- 
opher beheld in nature was to the evangelist more fully man- 
ifested by the grace of God which bringeth salvation. 

The Scope of the Decrees. 
The scope of the decrees of God embraces : 

1. "What God himself would do;" as, to create heaven and 
earth, and all creatures therein ; to reveal to man a perfect rule 
of behavior, the law of love; to redeem man fallen, etc. 



I42 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

2. "What he would require his intelligent creatures to do." 
Though a slight ambiguity lurks, unfortunately, in these words, 
we do not doubt that their designed meaning is that God's de- 
crees embrace what he desires his rational creatures, as moral 
agents, to do in the exercise of the freedom wherewith he has 
endowed them. It will include (a) man's behavior under law; 
as, to reverence his Maker, the observance of veracity, honesty, 
etc.; (b) specific assignments to men; as, Moses to lead Israel 
out of Kgypt, Jonah to preach to the Ninevites, etc. 

3. How he will deal with the obedient, and how with the dis- 
obedient. 

The third specification, relating to the awards God has decreed 
to assign respectively to the obedient and the disobedient, asserts 
what is explained and declared throughout the Scriptures, that 
the final apportionments to men will be according to their behav- 
ior as subjects of moral law, and toward the gospel offer of 
mercy, and not in accordance with an eternal, unconditional 
decree, irrespective of man's behavior. 

4. That God has decreed nothing contrary to his revealed will, 
or written word. 

That we do not " know all the decrees of God," we must most 
certainly suppose, since man can be regarded as only a small 
fraction of a vast economy of rational creatures, and his dwell- 
ing-place but an insignificant orb in the universe of whirling 
spheres; but still we may suppose, and must suppose, that the 
God revealed to us in the Scriptures decrees nothing contrary to 
what he declares to be his will. There is in this view of decrees 
no necessity for reconciling God's "secret purpose" with his 
revealed will. God is truth. With him is no variableness nor 
shadow of turning. Infinite wisdom and infinite power are alike 
attributes of God. We can comprehend neither, but they need 
no reconciling. God foreknows all things, and man acts freely. 
The two statements need no reconciling, for they involve no 
antagonism of thought. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 143 

The decrees of God, as taught by Cumberland Presbyterians, 
mean but the divine purpose to do and permit that which infinite 
wisdom sees to be for the highest well-being of all sentient 
creatures. All the decrees of God made known to us are in per- 
fect harmony with goodness and mercy, and such as to posit a 
rational basis for divine sovereignty, human agency, moral gov- 
ernment, a gracious offer of salvation to all men, and a just final 
reward for the obedient and final punishment of the disobedient. 

The Scriptures Versus Unconditional Predestination. 

Of the numerous plain passages of Scripture which, taken in 
their obvious import, underlie, as a granite foundation, this rea- 
sonable view of the decrees, but to which the Calvinistic decree 
is utterly unconformable, we may instance that wonderful 
epitome of the gospel found in 1 Timothy ii. 1-6: "I exhort, 
therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, 
and thanksgivings be made for all men ; for kings and all that 
are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in 
all godliness and gravity. For this is good and acceptable in 
the sight of God our Savior, who wills that all men should be 
saved, and should come to the knowledge of the truth. For 
(over all) there is but one God, and one mediator between God 
and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for 
all men, to be testified in due time." The translation by Cony- 
beare and Howson is given, as more nearly expressing the sense 
of the relative clause, " who will have all men to be saved," still 
more literally, who wills (dsAei) all men to be saved. Now, if 
an inspired apostle exhorts that prayer be made for all men, and 
on the ground that God wills that all men be saved, and that the 
one Mediator between God and men gave himself a ransom for 
all, how can it be believed that "God so ordains," as Calvin says, 
"by his counsel and his will, that some among men should be 
born devoted to certain death from the womb, to glorify his 
name by their destruction ; " or that, as the Westminster Confes- 



144 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

sion puts it, " God was pleased, according to the unsearchable 
counsel of his own will, for the glory of his sovereign power 
over his own creatures, to pass by " these " some among men," 
and, by a decree unconditional, without reference to any thing 
foreseen in these "some among men," "to ordain them to dis- 
honor and wrath?" If any one claims that he believes Paul, 
who declares that God wills the salvation of all men, and that he 
can, at the same time, believe Calvin and the Westminster Con- 
fession, he has prodigious capacity for believing ; and he who 
claims to be able to reconcile the teaching of Calvin and the 
Confession with that of Paul in the passage cited, certainly 
claims the ability to reconcile logical contradictions; and the 
God pictured by the imagination of such a one must be, saying 
it reverently, a singular kind of a God for a rational creature to 
worship ! The note of Dr. Van Oosterzee (in Lajige's Commen- 
tary) on the passage under consideration, is so excellent that we 
subjoin it in full: "Paul teaches, not only here, but in other 
places (Rom. viii. 52; xi. 32; Titus ii. 11), that the desire of 
God to bless all sinners is unlimited, yet it can be only in the 
ordained way of faith. And here, perhaps, he affirms it, in order 
to maintain this doctrine plainly against every Gnostic limita- 
tion of salvation, as well as to give a fit motive for prayer. For 
had God willed the contrary of what is here revealed, it would 
be foolish and fruitless to pray for the welfare of others, when 
perhaps this or that person might be shut out from the plan of 
salvation. Yet more, the apostle speaks here of the dikecv of 
God in general, not of the ftoufy/ia, which regards believers 
(Eph. i. 11). It is, therefore, entirely needless, by any exeget- 
ical gloss, to limit the expression, all men, or to understand it in 
the sense of all classes of men (which would make verse 1 an 
absurdity)." 

This plain and exceedingly precious passage, and a few others 
of similar import, may appropriately be placed in juxtaposition 
with an equal number of Calvinistic predestinarian utterances, 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 



145 



to illustrate how thoroughly discordant the language of these 
utterances is to that of the Scriptures, and how utterly irrecon- 
cilable is the Calvinistic decree of predestination with the gra- 
cious message of the gospel. On the one side we shall have the 
idea of the absolute and dreadful sovereignty of God electing 
some of our race, without any thing foreseen in these as moving 
him thereto, to be heirs of the joys of salvation, and passing by 
the remainder of the same lump of fallen humanity, and ap^- 
pointing them heirs of inevitable wrath and destruction ; but on 
the other side, the impartial compassion of a common heavenly 
Father who loved the world, the infinite compassion of the one 
Mediator who tasted death for all, and the universal invitation 
to that merciful provision the grace of God sets before all. 



The; Words of the Lord. 

"I exhort, therefore, first of all, 
that supplications, prayers, inter- 
cessions, thanksgivings, be made 
for all men ; for kings and all that 
are in high place ; that we may lead 
a tranquil and quiet life in all god- 
liness and gravity. This is good 
and acceptable in the sight of God 
our Savior; who willeth that all 
men should be saved, and come 
to the knowledge of the truth. For 
there is one God, one Mediator also 
between God and men, himself 
man, Christ Jesus, who gave him- 
self a ransom for all." 

"As I live, saith the Lord, I have 
no pleasure in the death of the 
wicked, but that the wicked turn 
from his way and live." — Ezek. 
xxxiii. ii. 

"And ye have not his word abid- 
ing in you ; for whom he sent, him 
ye believe not; .... and ye will 
not come to me that ye may have 
life."— John v. 38. 



" For God so loved the world, that 
he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth on him should 
not perish, but have eternal life." — 
John iii. 16. 



The Words of Men. 

" Predestination we call the eter- 
nal decree of God, by which he has 
determined in himself what he 
would have to become of every in- 
dividual of mankind; for they are 
not all created with similar destiny ; 
but eternal life is foreordained for 
some, and eternal damnation for 
others. Every man, therefore, being 
created for the one or the other of 
these ends, we say he is predesti- 
nated either to life or to death."— 
Calvin. 



" Since the will of God is said to 
be the cause of all things, that his 
providence is appointed to be the 
ruler in all the counsels and works 
of men ; so that it not only exerts its 
power in the elect, who are gov- 
erned by the Holy Spirit, but also 
compels the compliance of the rep- 
robate'''' (compels their wicked 
course — their rejection of Christ). 
— Calvin. 

"The rest of mankind (the non- 
elect) God was pleased, according 
to the unsearchable counsel of his 
own will, whereby he extendeth or 
withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, 



IO 



146 



DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



for the glory of his sovereign, 
power over his creatures, to pass by 
and to ordain them to dishonor and 
wrath for their sin." — West-minster 
Confession. 



" How often would I have gath- 
ered thy children together, as a hen 
doth gather her brood under her 
wings, and ye would not." — Luke 
xiii. 34. 

" It was necessary that the word 
of God should first have been 
spoken to you ; but seeing ye put it 
from you, and judge yourselves 
unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we 
turn to the Gentiles." — Acts xiii. 46. 



"I will not scruple to own that 
the will of God lays a necessity on 
all things." 

" Every action and motion of 
every creature is governed by the 
hidden counsel of God." — Calvin. 



"The Lord. . . . is long-suffering 
to usward, not willing (not desiring 
— New Version) that any should 
perish, but that all should come to 
repentance." — 2 Peter iii. 9. 

" Let no man say when he is 
tempted, I am tempted of God ; for 
God can not be tempted with evil, 
and he himself tempteth no man; 
but each man is tempted when he is 
drawn away by his own lust and en- 
ticed." — James i. 13, 14. 



" God calls to the reprobates, that 
they may be more deaf; kindles a 
light, that they may be more blind ; 
brings his doctrine to them, that 
they may be more ignorant ; and 
applies the remedy to them that 
they may not be healed." — Calvin. 



" Because I have called, and ye 
refused ; I have stretched my hand, 
and no man regarded it ; . . . . for 
that they hated knowledge, and did 
not choose the fear of the Lord. . . 
. . Therefore shall they eat of the 
fruit of their own way, and be 
filled with their own devices." — 
Prov. i. 29-31. [Chalmers makes 
their ways and their devices the 
ways and devices of God.] 



"Every step of every individual 
character receives as determinate a 
character from the hand of God, as 
every mile of a planet's orbit, or 

every wave of the sea This 

power of God knows no excep- 
tions ; it is absolute and unlimited. 
It reigns and operates through all 
the secrecies of the inner man. It 
gives birth to every purpose, it 
gives impulse to every desire, it 
gives shape and color to every con- 
ception. It wields an entire ascend- 
ency over every attribute of the 
mind; and the will, and the fancy, 
and the understanding, with all the 
countless variety of their hidden 
and fugitive operations, are sub- 
mitted to it."— Dr. Thomas Chal- 
mers 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 147 

Current Discussion of the Subject. 

We have dwelt upon this subject because it involves what is 
fundamental in the distinction between Calvinistic theology and 
Cumberland Presbyterian theology. The complete rejection of 
the Westminster doctrine of eternal unconditional predestina- 
tion and its logical sequences is the distinguishing characteristic 
of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, as a member of the 
Presbyterian family. It is also true, as before observed, that the 
doctrine that " God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass," 
which of necessity involves unconditional election, and its cor- 
relative, unconditional reprobation, identifies, shapes, and com- 
pletely dominates the Calvinistic system. We can no more have 
Calvinism, if the eternal, universal unconditional decree is 
omitted, than we can have a vertebrate without a spinal column. 
In Calvinism there is no high and low, hard and soft, extreme 
and moderate. Calvin himself derided as silly all those who 
held to election, but rejected reprobation. In the discussion of 
the question of "revision " in the Washington (Pa.) Presbytery, 
the Rev. Dr. Cunningham, though opposing revision, declared 
that it is "only a limited intelligence that can not understand 
that pretention is the necessary consequence of election;" and 
that, " If we reject pretention, we must reject election." Rev. 
Dr. Moffat, President of Washington and Jefferson College, is 
reported as strenuously advocating revision, declaring that the 
" radical revisionists " are not confined to the New York Presby- 
tery, but are all over the country, and that the New York men 
were only bolder, and had hung out their banner. The action 
of the Washington Presbytery was awaited with much interest. 
The territory embraced in the presbytery's limits is sometimes 
designated the "backbone of Presbyterianism," and includes an 
important seat of learning. After protracted and earnest discus- 
sion, the vote, forced by the call for the previous question, 
showed seventeen for and forty-two against revision. One mem- 



148 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

ber of the body is reported as declaring it " impossible to make 
verbal changes without making doctrinal changes." It is cer- 
tainly true that the Calvinistic system could not well be stated in 
more carefully chosen language, and if that system is to be 
retained the entire discussion seems equally useless and mean- 
ingless. But the discussion is not meaningless. It is hopefully 
and immensely significant, as revealing in the laity and the min- 
istry of that intelligent, numerous, and powerful Church, a large 
element fully determined so to modify the creed as to free the 
doctrine of the goodness of God from the frigid limitations of 
Calvinistic predestination. The following passage from the 
argument of Dr. Moffatt frankly states that the demand for re- 
vision arises out of dissatisfaction with the chapter on Decrees ; 
but, like others, he demands only a change of phraseology, 
while, as is apparent, he proposes to retain the Calvinistic ele- 
ment that is the true source of the uprising protest of head and 
heart : " There is not a Presbyterian Church on the face of the 
globe that has not had trouble right here. To stand over the 
Confession and refuse to allow it to be touched is not loyalty. 
If this confession is capable of improvement, I feel bound to 
attempt that improvement. As to the decrees of God, in that 
chapter we are telling the world the character of God. . . ' . 
There is in the world the Calvinistic idea of God ; we must say 
often to others, that they are mistaken as to those doctrines, and 
we have to explain those sections in chapter three. We want to 
avoid the suspicion of supralapsarianism, or the doctrine that 
God created men in order to damn them. Those old Westmin- 
ster divines believed that, many of them, and preached it; but 
we do not believe it to-day, nor teach it. Any minister to-day 
may preach that doctrine, and be true to the confession : to me 
it is a damnable heresy. My whole contention is right here. The 
other proposed changes are unimportant." If this language is 
correctly ascribed to Dr. Moffatt, we are sure the reader will be 
amazed when told that, in the same connection, the speaker said 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 49 

" Let any man propose a change which would subvert any great 
Calvinistic doctrines, and that man would be buried out of 
sight." The fundamental premise of Calvinism involves by 
logical necessity the very doctrine discarded as " damnable 
heresy," and yet a proposition " to subvert any great Calvinistic 
doctrines " would, in the Presbyterian Church, subject its author 
to "be buried out of sight ! " But again the speaker gets away 
from his Calvinism, affirming, " I have told men that if they go 
to hell, it is because they want to go. God does not want men 
to perish." Scriptural, but very zm-Calvinistic. 

The Old Doctrine Must Fai/u 

The framers of the Westminster Confession certainly did be- 
lieve, many of them, the doctrine ascribed to them by Dr. 
Moffat ; and, by his own admission, " any minister to-day may 
preach that doctrine, and be true to the Confession." Then it 
must be in the Confession. It is most prominently there, front- 
ing the Confession, in one of its longest chapters. To such a 
place it is entitled in any system of which it is an element, for it 
can not be subordinate. As a writer of the Calvinistic school 
puts it, " Election is the great fundamental institute of the gos- 
pel : it is that which in human states is called ' the supreme 
law ; ' which is both irreversible in itself, and requires that all 
inferior administrations may be accommodated thereto." Pre- 
destination is the ground-plan of the Calvinistic structure, deter- 
mining the relations of all the parts, and constituting, as the 
advocates tell us, " the plot whereby God designs to himself 
the highest glory;" since, as they affirm, this unconditional 
assignment of one human being to heaven and another to hell, 
" is the sublimest act, and most apparent demonstration, of 
sovereign power concerning men. ' The following excellent 
words touching revision of the Westminster Confession are from 
the pen of the venerable Dr. McCosh : " I can not tell how glad 
I am in reading of the unanimous decision of the Presbytery of 



1 5° 



DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



New York in regard to the revision of the Confession. When I 
uttered my opinion on the subject, in my Presbytery, on October 
i, I had no clear idea as to how Presbyterian sentiment was tend- 
ing. . . . How pleased I am that the Presbytery of New York 
has come to the same conclusion that I did. It is clear that we 
are to have the obnoxious passages in the Confession withdrawn 
in the course of a year or two." According to their own state- 
ments, our brethren of the Presbyterian Church are embarrassed 
with doctrinal standards which, to say the least, and what they 
admit, are liable to perplexing and damaging criticism. It must 
be apparent, too, that a revision of its creed by a Church of the 
magnitude of the Presbyterian body, must be indeed a difficult 
work. All who sincerely desire the peace and prosperity of the 
common household of God, will pray that our brethren may, in 
this endeavor, come at last to such a result as will make the in- 
telligence, the wealth, the numbers, and the prestige of this 
denomination a still greater power in our own land and through- 
out the world. With its wonderful equipment for every branch 
of Christian work, it has before it grand possibilities, which, 
through a wise and faithful improvement of this demand by 
thousands of its own people for the elimination of the vicious 
Calvinistic predestination, it may more than realize. 

With the writer's earliest recollections of preachers and 
preaching are associated the frequent discussions of this subject 
by Rev. Milton Bird and other ministers who introduced into 
western Pennsylvania the doctrines of the Cumberland Presby- 
terian Church. Crowds of people thronged those discussions, to 
be convinced by the masterly arguments ; and many were the 
converts through the gracious influences attending the urgent 
presentations of God's impartial love as manifested in the gos- 
pel provision and the gospel call to all men. Our early attempts 
at the perusal of theological discussions embraced The Great 
Supper by Rev. Archibald Fairchild, of the Presbyterian Church, 
and Error Unmasked, by Rev. Milton Bird, and the impression 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 15 I 

then received, that in this controversy truth lies on the side of 
Cumberland Presbyterian doctrine, has been strengthened by 
much study of the questions involved. A calm and impartial 
view of the doctrine of decrees as presented in the third chapter 
of the Westminster Confession — as far as we are capable of an 
impartial view, forces upon us these conclusions, as 

Logical Sequences of Predestination. 

1. Upon the hypothesis of Westminster predestination (elec- 
tion and pretention), the goodness of God, as we are accustomed 
to think of it, can not be maintai?icd. 

The Westminster Confession declares that God is " infinite in 
being and perfection," and "abundant in goodness." If it is 
meant that goodness is an attribute, it is infinite. Our Con- 
fession positively asserts that God is " infinite, eternal, and un- 
changeable " in being and attributes, goodness included in the lat- 
ter. The Scriptures declare that " God is love" (1 John iv. 8). 
This passage teaches, as Macknight justly observes, " that God 
greatly delights in the exercise of benevolence, and perhaps that 
his other perfections are exerted for the accomplishment of 
his benevolent purposes; " and adds, that " the declaration that 
' God is love ' must afford us the greatest consolation, as it as- 
sureth us that all God's dealings with us proceed from love, and 
in the end will assuredly issue in our happiness, unless we re- 
fuse to co-operate with him." The relation of the idea of an un- 
conditional decree electing a portion of humanity to salvation, 
and passing by the rest, to the idea of the goodness, or love of 
God, is a very plain one. If of two of my fellow beings exposed, 
by their own fault, to imminent peril, I rescue one, and, of my 
own good pleasure, pass the other by, when I could as readily 
have rescued both, no one would claim that I had done as much 
good as I could have done. Had both been entirely destitute of 
claim upon my sympathy and interposition, so much the more 
conspicuous would have been the goodness that prompted to the 



152 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

rescue of both. " Turn this (Calvinistic) system as you will,' ' 
says a vigorous thinker, " it sweeps away the mercy and good- 
ness of God, and, in most cases, transforms even the invitations 
and promises into scalding messages of aggravated wrath." 
But we would not indulge in bitter words, whether our own or 
borrowed. We most heartily sympathize with those who desire 
so to revise their creed as to make prominent the love of God 
now so overshadowed by the unconditional decree. The Bible 
declares that " the love of Christ passeth knowledge," in other 
words, that it exceeds human conception ; but theologians have 
certainly formulated systems which practically limit that love. 
The following passage, from a transatlantic author, breathes so 
good a spirit, and so conspicuously sets forth the ideas we would 
present in this connection, that we commend it to the reader's 
careful attention : 

" You can not have a plainer statement of a fact than that 
f God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but should have 
everlasting life.'' It sets before us the love of the Father and of 
the Son in all simplicity and fullness; shows us the fact of a 
divine love greater than we, if we try it, can comprehend. But 
men have not been content with this. They have said, ' There 
must be a reason for this, and we must find it. Love must work 
according to a system, and we must lay it down.' And so we 
meet with those who would teach us to believe, not in the love 
of God as the first and greatest fact in the universe, but in what 
they call the ' decree ' whereby they say he, for his own pleasure 
and own glory, elects some to eternal life, and lets his love rest 
on them through Christ, and passes by others, also for his own 
pleasure and glory, and lets his curse rest on them forever and 
ever. Are we wiser when we have got this into our heads than 
we were before with the simple words of the Bible ? Is it easier 
for us to understand a God who shall, ' for his own glory,' pick 
and choose among his creatures, giving some a certainty of 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 53 

salvation, and some not the smallest chance, than to understand 
that he loves us all with a love that ' passeth knowledge.' Is the 
puzzle of the universe, the ' riddle of the painful earth,' simpli- 
fied when you have set up over it as your highest idea of the 
divine, the decree of an absolute will, instead of the love of an 
all-embracing heart ? Does the mystery of the universal love of 
God to such as we are, the mystery of Christ's willing sacrifice 
for the sins of the whole world, survive such treatment as this ? 
Does this explanation leave us with a love that 'passes our 
knowledge ? ' Is there any difficulty in comprehending a love so 
partial and so wayward as this would represent the love of God 
to be, a love of which an}^ man with his own children round 
him would be ashamed, if he felt that to serve mere ends 
of his own, ends which they could not understand, and which 
he could never make them understand, he was deliberately doing 
some of them the greatest kindness, and dooming others of 
them, in secret, to the most hopeless misery ? Would you not 
call such a man selfish, and such children unjustly used? 
Would that not be the verdict of the calmest, wisest, and justest 
minds, and rightly so ? And what right has any man, or any 
set of men, to invest God with attributes which we condemn in 
man ; to ascribe to the Creator conduct which even in the 
creature we should say was unworthy and unjust? Is this 
' giving God glory,' as it is professed to be ? On the contrary, 
it is doing him dishonor. It is explaining in the coarsest way, 
and according to the harshest ideas, that which his word has 
told us is too vast and lofty for us to comprehend." 

2. The Calvi?iistic doctrine of predestinatio7i necessarily in- 
volves fatality, and thereby sweeps away the basis of freedom of 
the will, of the moral quality of actions, and of what, in the 
usual acceptation of the term, is called moral government. Ac- 
cording to this system, moral government can be as appropriate- 
ly predicated of the world of matter as of the world of mind. 
In the physical world, as Chalmers says, every mile of a planet's 



154 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OE THE 

orbit, every gust of wind, every wave of the sea, every particle 
of flying dust, every rivulet of flowing water, " receives a deter- 
minate character from the power of God," and, according to the 
same author, the same power operating in the world of mind 
gives birth to every purpose, impulse to every desire, shape and 
color to every conception. If the power thus controlling " the 
will, the fancy, the understanding, with all the countless variety 
of their hidden and fugitive operations," be the power of an 
omnipotent Creator who thus executes his decrees, man is, as to 
all ideas of responsibility, as utterly destitute of freedom as is a 
locomotive. One is run by the power of steam, the other by 
the power of God — rather, as Chalmers would have it, both by 
the power of God. So Thomas Aquinas taught, following 
Augustine, " that, as God's providence extended itself to every 
thing, it immediately concurred in the production of our 
thoughts, motions, and actions, and by a physical influence." 
Can we, with an open Bible, and with the views we must enter- 
tain of the moral deserts of human conduct, call it less than 
blasphemy against Heaven, and treason against humanity, to 
assert, as do these predestinarians, that the impulse which 
causes the murderer to inflict the deadly blow, and the blow 
itself, are suggested, concurred in, and necessitated by the 
will of God? Yet, such extreme fatalistic views are not 
only avowed by the more daring predestinarians, but are 
logical sequences from which no possible explanations can 
relieve the system. According to the Augustinian doctrine that 
the will of God is the necessity of things, and that every man is 
created and predestinated eternally and unchangeably, some to 
life, some to death, it must be true that every human being is 
tending to one of these destinies under a necessity from which 
it is as impossible for him to escape as it is for a lifeless body to 
burst the bands of death. If that is not fatality, there is no 
such thing. 

3. That the doctrine of the universal, unconditional decree, as 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 55 

taught in the Westminster Confession, if not pantheistic, is very 
nearly allied to that idea. Pantheism is the doctrine that the 
universe is God, God the universe. If the number of ears of 
corn produced in a year, the number of rows on each ear, and 
of grains in each row, and every chirp of a bird, and flexure of 
a rivulet, and impulse of the human sensibility, and every dream 
of the imagination, and every volition, with every other phe- 
nomenon of mind and of matter, are to be ascribed to the direct 
agency of God, I feel myself bordering on the thought that the 
world is God. 

It is by no means the writer's purpose to attempt a systematic 
discussion of the subject of decrees, or to attempt a refutation 
of the system of doctrine known as Calvinism. In the desultory 
collation of the ideas presented, it has been his purpose to indi- 
cate the line of thought pursued by Cumberland Presbyterians 
in their departure from that mixture of fatalistic philosophy and 
scriptural doctrine, as it has been justly designated, from which 
multitudes in the Presbyterian Church are to-day struggling to 
free their Standards. 

Cumberland Presbyterians Wonderfully Vindicated. 

Believing that in their departure from the Westminster system 
Cumberland Presbyterians made most important progress toward 
the true interpretation of the system of the Bible, we feel that 
if these pages shall, in any measure, contribute to our steadfast- 
ness in those great principles for the recognition of which our 
fathers struggled so nobly, a valuable service will have been 
rendered in the interest of precious truths. Men who are, in 
piety and learning, recognized lights in the Presbyterian Church 
are to-day fighting the very battles our fathers fought eighty 
years ago, and with this repetition of the struggle comes most 
grateful testimony to the wisdom and justice of the course pur- 
sued by those fathers. The following declarations by the pastor 
of Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New York, are the 



I56 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

sentiments uttered, in language less severe, by Ewing, King, 
Donnell, and others, at the opening of the century : " The love 
of God stands out on the face of the gospel. In the Confession 
you have to hunt for it in order to find it. The center of gravity 
of the Confession does not coincide with the center of gravity 
of the gospel. If, now, we are going to retain this pretention 
idea in our Confession, then we must be true to it in our preach- 
ing as Presbyterian ministers, and on occasion declare it in all 
frankness. We shall be obliged to address our congregations 
somewhat after this manner : ' My friends, I am sorry to say it, 
but as a Calvinistic Presbyterian I am bound to say it, that 
Christ did not die for all. There is a certain amount of fatalism 
in the case. Some men are damned, and not only that, but con- 
genially damned — damned before they are born, hated of God 
even in the moment of conception.' " 

Did a Cumberland Presbyterian ever make graver charges- 
against the Westminster Confession than does this eminent 
divine occupying a metropolitan Presbyterian pulpit ? And his 
presbytery did not prefer charges of heresy, but voted solid for 
revision. 

Rev. Dr. S. M. Hamilton, of the Presbytery of New York, is- 
reported as saying, during the two weeks' discussion on revis- 
ion : " Preterition is a mere attempt of men to confine the ways' 
of the Almighty by their petty syllogisms. To infer that God 
has for his own pleasure ' passed by ' any living soul is impossi- 
ble, except to a man who has never caught the first glimmer of 
the radiance from the Savior. . . . You may say that the Con- 
fession does not teach unconditional preterition, but at any rate 
it makes every body think it does." Similarly Dr. M. R. Vin- 
cent, of Union Theological Seminary, declared his belief that 
"the root of the difficulty lies in the Standards, not in the 
Church." " The Confession claims," he continued, " to repre- 
sent the word of God. And this claim, as it respects certain 
Statements of the Confession, is challenged. I am one of those 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 157 

•who challenge it. . . . The third chapter declares that some 
men and angels are foreordained unto everlasting death, and 
that their number is so certain that it can not be either increased 
or diminished. As a teacher of the New Testament Scriptures 
in one of the Church's Theological schools / declare my belief 
that that doctrine is not taught in the Holy Scriptures. ... I can 
not understand how it is possible for any man who declares his 
belief in the statements of the Confession to go into his pulpit 
and make a free offer of salvation to his congregation." Ex- 
pressions of like character could be cited almost without limit. 
The foregoing, from men eminent for learning and occupying 
high positions in the Presbyterian Church, suffice to illustrate 
the clear and powerful vindication of the teachings and policy 
of Cumberland Presbyterians developed by the current discus- 
sion on revision. 

In milder terms than these men have employed, Rev. Finis 
Bwing, one of the men who organized the Cumberland Presby- 
terian Church, said that " the great decree of God which con- 
cerns man's salvation is, ' He that believeth and is baptized 
shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.' . . . 
If words have any determinate meaning, these are conditions on 
which our salvation depends. Here, then, is a revealed decree. 
Men may talk or say what they please about secret decrees, pur- 
poses, predestination, election, etc., but we have just seen the 
decree of the Bible; the predestination, foreordination, and 
election of the Bible. . . . God is a mighty sovereign, possessing 
the right to work where, when, how, and on whom he will, yet 
it is nowhere definitely stated that God chose some to eternal 
salvation, except on the condition of faith and repentance." 

Rev. Robert Donnell, D.D., an eloquent and powerful preacher 
of the gospel in its simplicity, and one of the ablest expounders 
and defenders of the doctrines of the Cumberland Presbyterian 
Church, fifty or more years ago enunciated in the subjoined 
little summary, the very statement of the Bible doctrine of sal- 



158 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

vation by grace for which the progressive party in the Presbyte- 
rian Church is to-day nobly contending : 

" The plan of the Bible is grace and duty. God calls ; the 
sinner must accept it. Then God justifies, adopts, renews, sanc- 
tifies, and glorifies. The scheme of salvation originates with 
God, and is carried out in man's agency. The system is gra- 
cious, and personal accountability is secured. Election in the 
first instance was sovereign, gracious, and free, choosing all 
men to a day of mercy. Personal election turns on the choice 
of the sinner elect through sanctification of the Spirit, and be- 
lief of the truth. And thus free moral agency is sustained. 
God receives all the glory of faith ; and man all the damnation 
of unbelief. " 

NOTE. 
Explanatory and Apologetic. 

" For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth." — Paul. 

" We do not take possession of our ideas, but are possessed by them. 
They master us, and force us into the arena, 
Where, like gladiators, we must fight for them." — Heine. 

To distinguish Cumberland Presbyterians doctrinally as a 
branch of the great Presbyterian family necessitates a clear and 
full statement of the teaching of the Cumberland Presbyterian 
Confession of Faith on the subject of the Decrees of God, in 
contrast with the teaching of the Westminster Confession. 
Such presentation of our views, however, whether through the 
press or from the pulpit, has not unfrequently been the occasion 
of complaint that we are unfair in our interpretation of the 
Westminster Confession, and that, as theological disputants, we 
are disturbers of the peace of the Church. It seems suitable, 
therefore, to ask our brethren of the other side, at this stage of 
the statement of our views, to consider what we regard the 
necessity that has been upon us to discuss this subject, both in 
view of our obligation to defend the truth, as we understand it, 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 159, 

and in order to answer honest inquiry in regard to the doc- 
trinal difference between Cumberland Presbyterians and other 
branches of the Presbyterian family. 

Many times have members of the Presbyterian Church said 
to us, after our attempt at stating our doctrinal views on the 
controverted points, " Why, that is just what we believe." To 
all such we might justly say, " Then, certainly, if you are not 
in the wrong Church, your Church has the wrong confession of 
faith." It is with the writer a matter of recollection that the 
early Cumberland Presbyterian ministers in Pennsylvania fre- 
quently discussed from the pulpit the doctrines of decrees, 
election, freedom of the will, infant salvation, and other doc- 
trines wherein by formal statement or logical sequence our 
standard differs from the Westminster. While those controver- 
sial discourses sometimes stirred up strife, and were the occa- 
sion of bitter charges of unfairness and even of bad motives as 
prompting them, it is our belief that they did good, and that, 
for the most part, they were prompted by sincere convictions of 
duty on the part of men seemingly endowed with wonderful 
power in the presentation of the great truths they felt them- 
selves set to defend. Nor can it be doubted that many a good 
and faithful minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church 
has come to the discussion of the disputed doctrines with the 
sincere desire which pervades the writer's mind in this allusion 
to the controversy— namely, that the controversy come to an end. 
Yet, whatever the conditions it impose upon us, whether of 
peace or controversy, we must unwaveringly heed the divine 
command to " buy the truth, and sell it not." 

As a last word upon the subject, the following points are 
submitted as affirming what the writer firmly believes to be the 
truth touching this controversy : 

1. The difference between the teaching of the Cumberland 
Presbyterian Confession, and that of the Westminster Confes- 
sion, is radical, and is widely related as a determining factor in 



l6o DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

a theological system, necessarily affecting our views of the love 
of God, the extent and design of the atonement, the gospel call, 
of the sinner's ability to accept the gospel offer, of moral merit 
and demerit, of the very foundation of moral government. 

2. That Cumberland Presbyterians have interpreted the 
Westminster Confession according to the obvious and literal 
meaning of its language, in its true historic sense, and as it is 
now usually interpreted in the Calvinistic theological schools. 

3. That many pious and learned men in the Calvinistic 
branches of the Presbyterian Church now interpret the West* 
minster Confession exactly as Cumberland Presbyterians have 
interpreted it, and on that interpretation base their pleas for a 
revision of that Confession. 

Of the truth of the last proposition, the present discussion 
which agitates the mother Church from center to circumference 
affords interesting and abundant proof; so that, were they in 
need of it, Cumberland Presbyterians could find in the pending 
discussion ample justification of their interpretation and rejec- 
tion of the Westminster Confession. In illustration of the 
statement here made, from the vast number of pertinent decla- 
rations which have gone to the public we can not make a better 
selection than the brief, but most comprehensive, statement of 
the late Judge Alexander Wilson Acheson, of Washington, Pa. 
Judge Acheson, who died in July, 1890, at the advanced age of 
eighty years, was a man widely known for ability in his profes- 
sion, for his general intelligence, and his deep interest in all 
movements for the good of society. He was esteemed indeed 
a just judge, who feared God, and regarded man in all that per- 
tains to man's well-being. Himself a Presbyterian, a student 
of theology as well as of law, so correct an interpreter of the 
meaning of language that his judicial decisions covering many 
years in a busy court were seldom if ever reversed, Judge 
Acheson, prompted by his disappointment in the vote of the 
Washington Presbytery on the question of revision, penned, 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. l6l 

seemingly as a dying testimony, the following plea for revision, 
setting forth therein, as the reader will note, such an interpre- 
tation of the old standards as fully concedes all that Cumber- 
land Presbyterians have claimed. It will be seen, too, that the 
learned jurist, whose " most prominent characteristic " a eulo- 
gist declared to be " his quick grasp of legal principles, joined 
with peculiar power in tracing the analogies of the law, and 
applying them to new questions at issue/' did not desire only 
such a revision as would preserve the old doctrinal system 
intact, but clothe it in a more modern dress, but that the " iron 
collar" might be entirely broken, and his Church thus freed; 
which " iron collar," be it observed, is the very same " fatalism " 
which the fathers of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church cast 
off, which they believed to be taught under the mystery of Cal- 
vinistic predestination. Here is the truth as " grasped in the 
struggle of the great soul" of the advocate, judge, and Chris- 
tian philanthropist, and uttered with a courage born of honest 
convictions, and with faith that his people would finally eliminate 
from their creed the vicious element " which obscures the infi- 
nite love of God in Christ Jesus for a lost world : " 

" Revision Reviewed — Views of a Learned Layman that 
Can Not be Misunderstood. 

" Editor Journal : — Allow an old Presbj'terian to express his 
disappointment at the result of the revision question in our 
Washington Presbytery. I am not a scholastic theologian, and 
therefore may lack clear insight into mysteries difficult of com- 
prehension ; but I am a firm believer in a coming closer Church 
union and affiliation among Christians of all denominations. I 
see the signs now in the increase of fraternal intercourse and 
the softening of religious intolerance and bigotry. 

" If John Calvin were living to-day I think he would be a 

sweeter tempered Christian, a less dogmatic theologian, and 

not so much of a fatalist, indisposed to consign infants to dam- 
ii 



1 62 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

nation, or even Catholics, on the ground of their being infidels 
and outside the covenanted mercies of God. 

" The famous old lawyers of the last century, L,ord Eldon, Sir 
William Blackstone, and other legal celebrities, resisted to the 
death all changes in the English criminal law, for the reason 
that it had the sanction of antiquity, and any change would 
endanger the pillars of jurisprudence. True, it visited the mur- 
derer and the stealer of bread with equal and exact justice by 
hanging both of them by the neck, but what of that so long as 
the sacred standards sanctioned it ? 

" I believe in God's sovereignty over man's destiny for time 
and eternity, but I do not believe in the infallibility of the 
learned Westminster divines nor of the Pope. I believe in the 
inspiration of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, but to get clear 
insight into his mind, we must sit at the feet of the Master, and 
learn of him the mysteries of his kingdom. I should be puz- 
zled touching the mission of womankind in his church if I 
stopped with Paul. I can understand what it is, however, when 
I listen to his gracious words of tenderness and love to women. 
So we must study Christ and Paul together. Christ before Paul 
always, to get at the harmony existing in the sacred word. I 
think the Westminster divines in their excessive admiration for 
Calvin forgot this. They lived in a stormy time ; a fierce con- 
flict was raging about dogmas ; persecution reigned, and they 
were filled with the wrath of Sinai more than touched by the 
tender mercy of Calvary. If we are to understand that there is 
no salvation out of Christ, in the sense of our Confession of 
Faith — that in the councils of eternity, before time began, the 
damnation of the larger portion of mankind was predestined 
and decreed, the mercy of God becomes overclouded, his justice 
eclipsed, and the mission of our Savior shorn of its sweetest 
attraction. 

"The old last century lawyers resisted all change of the 
criminal creed of their day, but were constrained by an enlight- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 63 

ened public conscience to provide some outlet of escape from 
the horrible result of their creed, and this consisted in the inter- 
position of executive clemency, staying the prescribed punish- 
ment. And so the rank and file of Presbyterian Church mem- 
bers are exempted from the rigors of the Confession, only 
ministers and Church officers being made amenable to strict 
discipline for their lack of faith. This speaks feebly for the 
outcry against revision on the ground of danger to the pillars 
of our faith. 

" Nearly nineteen centuries have passed away since the cruci- 
fixion. The command to preach the gospel to every creature 
remains unfulfilled to this day. Have all the innumerable host 
of human souls brought into existence by the fiat of the 
Almighty through these centuries been sunk to endless perdi- 
tion by the default of the Church to fulfill his dying command ? 
' How can they hear without a preacher? ' Are they lost for not 
accepting Christ or for not living up to the light afforded by 
nature and natural instinct? Bad as unregenerate human 
nature is, what warrant have we for saying that no heathen soul 
during the past centuries has lifted itself by the light of nature 
to search after God, if peradventure it could find him ? 

" Is God still calling infants into existence to consign them to 
perdition by his electing grace ? Regret as you may the agita- 
tion of revision, it is upon the Church, it will not down, there is 
too much moral force behind it. If it should rend the grand 
old Presbyterian body, where will the dreadful responsibility 
lie? It is in vain to say that there are wolves in sheep's 
clothing within the Church seeking to overthrow the funda- 
mental doctrine of God's elective grace and sovereignty. The 
sincere advocates of revision seek not to lay sacrilegious hands 
on the ark of the covenant ; they aim to take off us a cruel iron 
collar burthensome to their consciences, which obscures the 
infinite love of God in Christ for a lost world. 

"A. W. Acheson." 



164 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

These words of a Christian layman, brief, but wonderfully 
comprehensive, in no ambiguous manner reveal his position touch- 
ing this controversy, clearly showing his belief (1) that the West- 
minster doctrine of decrees fairly interpreted means the " iron 
collar " of fatality about man's neck, or, in his own language, 
" that in the councils of eternity, before time began, the damna- 
tion of the larger portion of mankind was predestinated and 
decreed; " (2) that according to the teaching of Christ, no one 
of the human race, whether of those who hear the gospel, of 
those who hear it not, or of those dying in infancy, is doomed to 
inevitable destruction by an eternal unconditional decree of 
God absolutely predestinating some men to life and others to 
death; (3) that a refusal to revise theological codes simply be- 
cause they are " time-honored " does not comport with that true 
spirit of progress and of freedom of thought through which the 
human mind has achieved its great advancement in the inter- 
pretation of the word and the works of God. 

With Judge Acheson, the writer of these lines is "a firm 
believer in a coming closer Church union and affiliation of 
Christians of all denominations," and whatever signs there may 
be, " in an increase of fraternal intercourse and the softening of 
religious intolerance," of this " coming closer Church union and 
affiliation," we too rejoice in those signs, as did the good and 
venerable man who now enjoys the full measure of the union 
and affiliation often, alas, but too feebly foreshadowed in the 
Church on earth. The reader is asked, however, not to con- 
strue the foregoing expression as any declaration of opinion on 
the part of the writer regarding the practicability or desirableness 
of organic union of Cumberland Presbyterians with the Calvin- 
istic branches ; and equally does the writer desire that neither 
this note, nor the preceding presentation of the subject of 
decrees, nor any other section of this doctrinal statement shall 
be regarded as an effort to build a dyke against any tendency to 
union that is likely to come out of the pending movement for 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 65 

the revision of the old standards. On this question of very- 
grave importance we are open to conviction, and willing, we 
trust, to walk, from time to time, in what Providence may indi- 
cate to be the path of duty. In passing it is not amiss to avow 
our conviction that if the two great branches of the Presbyte- 
rian Church whose chief difference seems to be, that of 
geographical distribution, and the Cumberland Presbyterian 
Church, could unite on a brief doctrinal formula clearly stating 
the impartial love of God, a general atonement, the offer of sal- 
vation to all men, man's responsibility in view of the Spirit's 
quickening influences secured to all to whom the gospel comes, 
and that a godly life is the scriptural test of saving faith in 
Christ, and of right to membership in the body of Christ, the 
united Church, on such a doctrinal basis, and with such a bap- 
tism of the Spirit as would endow it with the zeal which char- 
acterized the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in the first half 
century of its existence, would prove such a power for good as 
the world has yet scarcely beheld. Not only is the door wide- 
open, in the providence of God, for the immediate publication 
of the gospel in all lands, and opportunity and the world's need 
thus challenging the mightiest energies of God's people of all 
names, but the gravest social, moral, and religious problems 
will tax the energies of the Church to the uttermost in order to 
the salvation of our own country, which, as one has said, must 
be held for Christianity, or all is lost. The Christianity of 
to-day is indeed doing much. It is potentially the light of the 
world, and such it may soon be in fact ; but as it is nearly two 
thousand years since the Master gave command to preach his 
gospel to every creature, and so large a portion of the world has 
not yet heard that gospel, is there not serious ground for consid- 
ering whether the multiplicity of Christian sects does not 
involve the expenditure of much means and energy w r hich 
might otherwise be much more directly available for the world's 
conversion ? 



1 66 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



CHAPTER V. 

CRKATION. 

It pleased God, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, 
wisdom, and goodness, to create the world and all things therein, whether 
visible or invisible ; and all very good. After God had made all other 
creatures, he created man in his own image ; male and female created he 
them, enduing them with intelligence, sensibility, and will ; they having 
the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it, being up- 
right and free from all bias to evil. — Confession of Faith. 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. — Genesis i. i. 

" For the invisible things of him, even his eternal power and Godhead, 
since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made." — Rom. i. 20. 

" What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth unto you. 
The God that made the world and all things therein, he, being Lord of 
heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is he 
served by men's hands as though he needed any thing, seeing he himself 
giveth to all life, and breath, and all things ; and he made of one every nation 
of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their ap- 
pointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation ; that they should 
seek God, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he is 
not far from each one of us : for in him we live, and move, and have our 
being ; as certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also his 
offspring." — Acts xvii. 23-28. 

" By faith we understand that the worlds were produced by the com- 
mand of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things 
which did appear." — Heb. xi. 3. 

f~\N the last cited passage, Macknight, whose translation has 
^^^ been followed, has this note : " By revelation we understand 
that the worlds, namely, the sun, moon, and stars, with their appur- 
tenances, ' were brought into being by the word of God : So that 
the things which are seen (the worlds) were not made of things 
which did appear ' before they were made ; — that is, the worlds 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 167 

which we see were not made of matter which had existed from 
eternity, but of matter which God created and formed into the 
things which we see ; and having formed them, he placed them 
in the beautiful order which they now hold, and impressed on 
them the motion proper to each, which they have retained ever 

since." 

" It is as easy to conceive that an Almighty Power might pro- 
duce a thing out of nothing, and to make that exist de novo, 
which did not exist before, as to conceive the world to have had 
no beginning, but to have existed from all eternity." — Dr. South. 

In its protracted effort for a satisfactory explanation of the 
universe of which itself is a part the human mind has exhibited 
its sublimest endeavor. What is, whence it came, how it came 
to be as it is, for what end it exists, and whither it is tending, 
are inquiries which in all ages have exercised the powers of the 
most gifted. The problem of being in its many phases has been 
indeed the problem of problems. Is it possible for man to know 
whence he came, for what purpose he exists, what his des- 
tiny, and the destiny of the universe mirrored to his soul ? Or 
is he hopelessly shut in to an empty echo from barriers of 
impenetrable darkness which tauntingly hurl back his inquiries ? 
The problem of our existence is " utterly inscrutable," says 
modern skepticism ; and the same skepticism hopelessly bewails 
the darkness of its own making. Late in life, the gifted David 
Hume, the prince of modern skeptics, said : 

" I am appalled at the forlorn solitude in which I am placed 
by my philosophy ; and I begin to fancy m} T self in the most de- 
plorable condition imaginable, environed in the deepest dark- 
ness ! " 

According to the positive philosophy, as taught by its chief 
master August Comte, it is vain to inquire concerning the origin, 
the purpose, or the destiny of the universe. We can know only 
facts, it tells us, and to attempt to draw from them any conclu- 
sion as to an author of nature or its destination is foolish, as ut- 



1 68 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

terly transcending man's powers to know. In the language of 
one of its expounders : " When the natural philosopher is con- 
vinced that the essential nature of things, — the origin and desti- 
nation of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, — are insol- 
uble problems, positive science begins. Accepting only the 
results of experiment and observation, the mind gives over the 
vain search after absolute notions beyond the reach of either. 
While positive science, thus freed from impediments, steadily 
advances, carrying conviction to man's intellect, that same in- 
tellect turns away from metaphysical speculation ever agitating 
questions to which there is no reply. Every thing is judged by 
facts and results." 

But man's desire to know whence he came, and why he is 
here, and whither he goes will not down at any such bidding of 
an arbitrary philosophy. The unquenchable desire for an ex- 
planation of the universe about him, and of its and his own or- 
igin and destiny, heeds no demands for silence, but asserts its 
claim, as a most veritable and potent fact, to be heard by every 
philosophy that claims to build with facts. While it would be 
quite beyond the designed limits of these pages to enter upon a 
discussion or even a statement of the various atheistic theories 
of the world, it is well to note that Positivism, Materialism, Ag- 
nosticism, and all other theories which deny or ignore an intelli- 
gent First Cause, and thus leave man without a divine Father 
whose love and guidance he may trust, do necessarily subvert 
the foundation of our hope and well-being, and invest the future 
with painful uncertainty or blank despair. Thomas Carlyle, 
whose " grand, rough soul " " saw deep into the heart of things," 
well expressed, in his rough and vigorous style, the tendency of 
every system of cosmology which attempts an explanation of 
the universe without the factor of a superintending omnipotent 
and all- wise Intelligence : " Ah, it is a sad and terrible thing to 
see nigh a whole generation of men and women professing to be 
cultivated, looking around in a purblind fashion, and finding no 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 169 

God in this universe. I suppose it is a reaction from the reign 
of cant and hollow pretense, professing to believe what in fact 
they do not believe. And this is what we have got to. All 
things from frog spawn ; the gospel of dirt the order of the day. 
The older I grow — and I now stand upon the brink of eternity, 
— the more comes back to me the sentence in the catechism 
which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its 
meaning becomes, ' What is the great end of man ? — To glorify 
God and enjoy him forever.' No gospel of dirt, teaching that 
men have descended from frogs through monkeys, can ever set 
that aside." 

In this teaching of the catechism, so simple, and yet so com- 
prehensive, implying a rational explanation of man's origin, and 
stating the rational end for which he exists, is laid the founda- 
tion of social and civil order, the basis of moral law, the stimu- 
lus to the highest endeavor for all that is true and noble and 
good, and the charter of all our hopes for the boundless future to 
which we go. Cut loose from this mooring, humanity drifts 
aimless, rudderless, hopeless. From this brief attempt to con- 
trast the gloomy speculations of science falsely so called which 
professes to find a world without an intelligent author or ruler, 
with the cheerful faith that the worlds were framed by the word 
of God, and that 

" The hand which bears creation up 
Will guard his children well," 

let us seek to analyze the doctrine of creation as presented in 
the Confession, and supported by the texts cited therewith. We 
here have, then, 

1. A specific act of absolute creation. 

By " absolute creation " we mean the bringing into being 
what did not before exist. That is the scriptural account of the 
origin of the universe, or the biblical cosmology. As logically 
denned, " creation is the act by which God produced out of 
nothing all things that now exist." But when it is said that 



170 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

God made all things out of nothing (ex nihilo), it is not meant 
that " nothing " is an entity, a material, a " stuff" out of which 
God made the things that exist. We are to understand 
there was literal creation in the most absolute sense. Once the 
universe was not, did not exist, as to the substance of which it 
is composed, and as to the form the universe now presents. 
Now it does exist, and creation is that act of divine will by 
which the universe now is. Of the idea of transition from not 
existing to existing, or from nothing to substance, we may form 
a clear conception ; but how the transition is effected by a fiat 
of Infinite Power, utterly transcends human understanding. 

The doctrine of absolute creation as stated in the foregoing 
paragraph is clearly taught in numerous plain passages in the 
Scriptures, as in the passages heading this chapter. It is a doc- 
trine both fundamental and peculiar in Christian cosmology. 
Heathen philosophy teaches the eternity of matter, and if it ad- 
mits creation in any sense, as some of the ancient philosophers 
did, it is in the subordinate sense of arranging, or constructing, 
the cosmos out of eternally existent material. Likewise is the 
fact of absolute creation seemingly implied in the inspired rep- 
resentations of the independence and sovereignty of God. 
Says Dr. A. A. Hodge (Commentary on the Confession), " If God 
he not the creator of substance ex nihilo, as well as the former 
of worlds and things, he can not be absolutely sovereign in 
his decrees or in his works of creation, providence, or grace. 
On every hand he would be limited and conditioned by the self- 
existent qualities of pre-existent substances. But the Scriptures 
always represent God as the absolute sovereign and proprietor 
of all things." Rom. xi. 36; 1 Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. 16; Rev. iv. 
1 1 ; Neh. ix. 6. 

Again, it is argued, and seemingly with very great force, that 
the elementary substances we know as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, 
and the rest, do, by their properties, their affinities, and other re- 
lations they sustain to the composition of the goodly material 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 171 

frame built out of their combinations in definite proportions, 
certainly compel us to believe that they are endowed with what 
Sir John Herschel denominated " the essential character of a 
manufactured article." If " the heavens declare the glory of 
God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork," then must the 
very atoms, which are so constituted and endowed as to rear the 
wonderful cosmos of forms animate and inanimate, have come 
from the hand of Him whose power and wisdom made the world 
as it is. Thus theologians distinguish what they call ere atio prima , 
or the creation of the substances (whether material or non-mate- 
rial) of the universe, from the creatio secunda, or the distribution 
and combination of these substances in the harmonious system 
we call the universe. 

That such has been in all ages the faith of the Church in re- 
gard to the doctrine of creation can not be doubted. The 
Apostles' Creed, as given in a preceding chapter, opens with the 
sublime expression, I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker 
of heaven and earth. Pearson, in his admirable exposition of 
the Creed, tells us that the " first rules of faith " thus expressed 
the doctrine of creation, and that " the most ancient creeds had 
either instead of these words, or together with them, the maker 
of all things visible a?id invisible." So the Nicene Creed; and 
the Constantinopolitan says, " I believe in one God the Father 
Almighty, Maker of heave?i and earth, and of all thi?igs visible 
and invisible." According to Pearson, who justly observes that 
" the work of creation properly followeth the attribute of om- 
nipotence, the phrase, ' maker of heaven and earth,' was not at 
the first a part of the Apostles' Creed, and that it was probably 
not added until as late as the eighth century, when in the West- 
ern Confessions we read : Credo in Deum Patrem Om?iipotentem } 
Creator em cceli el terrcB." 

" The Hebrew word translated ' to create,' and used by Moses 
to reveal the fact that God created the world, is the very best af- 
forded by any human language anterior to revelation to express 



172 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

the idea of absolute making. It is introduced at the beginning 
of an account of the genesis of the heavens and of the earth. 
In the beginning — in the absolute beginning — God created all 
things (heaven and earth). After that there was chaos, and sub- 
sequently the Spirit of God, brooding over the deep, brought 
the ordered world into being. The Creation came before chaos, 
as chaos came before the bringing of things into their present 
form. Therefore the substance of things must have had a be- 
ginning, as well as their present forms." So says Dr. Hodge, 
and other Hebrew scholars agree with him as to the significance 
of the word translated " to create." 

The doctrine of creation, as held by theologians, admits the 
existence of only one eternal being, and that being a pure spirit,, 
who is " at once substance and cause, intelligence and power, 
absolutely free, and infinitely good." As alternatives to the 
Christian idea of creation we have (1) dualism, which asserts the 
eternal existence of matter, while it admits God as creator in the 
secondary sense, as when it is said God formed man of the dust 
of the earth ; and (2) pantheism, which in reality means that 
matter, or the substance of which all beings consist, is the sole 
necessary and self-existent eternal being. It identifies God and. 
the universe ; while the biblical doctrine clearly teaches that 
God and the universe are essentially distinct — the former a. 
spirit self-existent, infinite, eternal, omnipotent ; the latter de- 
pendent, finite, created being. If the reasons previously stated 
for rejecting the idea of two eternal beings are conclusive, there 
remains the idea of the eternity of the universe, as the sole 
alternative of the theological doctrine of creation by an Om- 
nipotent Intelligence. Has the world always existed? If 
not, since it can not have been self-caused, and must have had 
some cause, it must have been created by a being other than 
itself. 

Such, in its simplest and final form, is the point at issue 
between the atheistic and the theistic systems of philosophy — a 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 173 

problem of immense significance in its practical relation to the 
peace and order of society and to the highest hopes of humanity. 

Manifestly, the demand upon philosophy is, to determine 
whether the universe, so far as man can know it, exhibits char- 
acteristics which prove that it must have had a beginning ; or 
whether it presents the characteristics of that which is self- 
existent and, therefore, eternal. The great battle of to-day on 
the field of thought is between the Christian and the Material- 
istic philosophy. Though a very old, old philosophy, Ma- 
terialism is none the less a dangerous foe in the nineteenth cent- 
ury. Its aim through all the ages has been, as it is to-day, to 
drive the Creator from his universe, and subject all the phenom- 
ena of mind to such necessitated causation as sweeps away all 
rational basis of responsibility, and so to open the flood-gates of 
vice. Never, perhaps, more than to-day, was there demand that 
Christian scholars wield their learning and talents to embank 
against the incoming tide of materialistic thought ; for " if the 
foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? " 

Over against the Christian philosophy, which interprets the 
universe as being in all its parts, both material and spiritual, the 
product of an Infinite and Absolute Intelligence, from whose fiat 
it has arisen through successive creative acts, Atheistic Material- 
ism, certainly the most formidable adversary of our times, to 
every idea essential to religious orthodoxy, constructs the uni- 
verse in this style : 

" Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, etc., are the elements at present 
recognized as constituting the earth, its products, its inhabitants, 
and its atmosphere. From the facts thus acquired, we draw a 
conclusion broad enough to comprehend all the partial modifica- 
tions with which experience may make us acquainted. The 
things which in their totality are expressed by the word uni- 
verse, are formed of a certain number of known substances, beyond 
which there is nothing. Simple bodies, combined in various pro- 
portions have received and will retain the generic name of mat- 



174 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

ter." So says A. Lefevre, who has won the distinction of " one 
of the strongest advocates of materialism." The words itali- 
cized suffice to indicate the immeasurable assumption of which 
the atheistic philosophy is capable, which is, in fact, a necessary 
postulate of the whole system. It simply says, " What I per- 
ceive by the senses — that is all ; in this universe stretching on 
all sides into unfathomed depths of space, there is, I am sure, 
nothing but this matter which I discern by sensation." Can the 
most dogmatic theological faith exceed such credulity? Far 
back in the time of Leucippus, its accredited founder, and as 
Democritus taught it, and as Lucretius later expounded it, this 
theory ascribed the universe to a fortuitous combination of an 
infinity of atoms eternally dashing about in infinite space, and 
coming finally to the juxtaposition which constitutes the world 
as it is. The universe had, in fact, no beginning, it assures us ; 
and it will have no end, for what we now call the universe is but 
a phase of an eternal series of transformations. As formulated 
by another, the theory says : 

" Matter is eternal. Matter consists ultimately of atoms, 
which were at first distributed through empty space. The atoms 
are homogeneous in quality, but heterogeneous in form ; motion 
is the eternal and necessary consequence of the original variety 
of atoms in the vacuum; the atoms are impenetrable, and, 
therefore, offer resistance to one another. All existing forms — 
the stars, the planets, the earth, plants, animals, mind itself — 
evolved from these atoms. The process of evolution began by 
the atoms striking together, and the lateral motions and whirl- 
ings thus produced were the beginnings of the worlds ; the va- 
rieties of things depend on the variety of their constituent 
atoms. The first cause of all existence is necessity, that is, the 
necessary succession of cause and effect." 

So Strauss, distinguishing " world " in the relative sense, as 
meaning a body or system of related bodies, from world in the 
sense of the universe, or totality of what is, tells us that 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 175 

" though it is true that every world (in the former sense) has its 
limitation in space as it has its beginning and end in time, yet 
the universe spreads itself forth and maintains its continuity 
inimitably, alike through all space and all time." "Conse- 
quently," as he further explains, "not only our earth, but our 
solar system also, and every other part of the totality of the 
universe, has at one period been what it no longer is (in this 
sort did not exist at all), and will one day cease to be as it now 
is." But of the " universe " he affirms " there never was a time 
when it was not, a time when there was in it no distinction of 
celestial bodies, no life, no reason. All this, if it was not in one 
part, was in another part, and had ceased to be in a third part ; 
here it was coming into being, there it was in full subsistence, 
in a third place it was passing away ; the universe is an infinite 
complex of worlds in all the stadia of origin and transition, and 
because of this eternal revolution and alternation preserves it- 
self in eternal, absolute fullness of life." Into the eternally 
self-existent universe, Strauss finds an easy method of introduc- 
ing life at such stages of the ever-shifting cosmos as favor it, 
declaring that its appearance " does not involve the creation of 
something new, but only the bringing of existent forms of mat- 
ter and forces into another species of combination and movement, 
for which a sufficient occasion maybe found in the conditions of 
primeval time so totally diverse from those of the present, the 
wholly different temperature, and of atmospheric composition, 
and similar causes." 

We propose no analysis or refutation of this theory of the 
universe which dispenses with Intelligent Creative Power, our 
aim being only to contrast the atheistic with the theistic concep- 
tion of the universe. It is in place to note that modern atheistic 
theories have little or nothing new to offer. The Roman poet 
Lucretius, assuming " matter ample " and endowed with " causal 
force," constructed the universe as readily as the materialists of 
the present day : 



176 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

" If then you '11 understand, you '11 plainly see 
How the vast mass of matter, Nature free 
From the proud care of the meddling Deity, 
Doth work by her own private strength, and move 
Without the trouble of the powers above. 
For, matter given, space and causal force, 
Formation follows as a thing of course." 

As noticed by Cocker in his admirable work, Christianity and 
Greek Philosophy \ I^ucretius felt the necessity of something more 
than the " space and matter" admitted by the Epicurean system, 
in order to construct the universe. To obtain this " something " 
he admits freedom of action in the human will, and then argues 
that since man, who is only an aggregate of atoms, exhibits 
spontaneous movement, such movement must be an attribute of 
the atoms of which he is composed. The atoms being liberated, 
by this begging of the question, from the necessity of moving 
eternally in straight lines, the universe arises thus : By a slight 
voluntary deflection from the straight line atoms (distributed 
through infinite space) are now brought into contact with each 
other ; " they strike against each other, and by the percussion 
new movements and new complications arise " — " movements 
from high to low, from low to high, and horizontal movements 
to and fro." The atoms " jostling about of their own accord, in 
infinite modes, were often brought together confusedly, irreg- 
ularly, and to no purpose, but at length they successfully co- 
alesced ; at least such of them as were thrown together suddenly 
became, in succession, the beginnings of great things — as earth, 
and air, and sea, and heaven." — {Cockers Christianity and Greek 
Philosophy,J)p. 436-7.) 

Philosophers of the Epicurean sect encountered Paul at 
Athens. The practical side of the Epicurean creed is expressed 
in 1 Cor. xv. 22 — "L,et us eat and drink,, for to-morrow we die." 
The founder of the sect, born B.C. 432, was a practical atheist, 
admitting the existence of gods to save himself from public 
censure, but relegating them to a sphere beyond all concern 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 77 

about human affairs. Hence, the Epicureans denied Provi- 
dence, accountability, and the possibility of any life beyond the 
present mortal state ; and so held that the part of wisdom is to 
enjoy to the greatest possible extent whatever pleasure this 
world may afford, seeing there is for man no other. Modern 
materialistic writers have advanced nothing in support of their 
theory beyond what Epicurus presented ; and the tendency of 
the system is to-day what it was two thousand years ago. 
Though somewhat aside from the main line of discussion, the 
following excellent paragraph (from Cocker's work) is cited as 
justly characterizing the tendency of materialistic philosophy, 
and illustrative of the fact that a theory of the universe must 
take a most important bearing on man's practical life in all that 
pertains to his well-being : 

" The system of Epicurus is thus a system of pure material- 
ism His openly avowed design is to deliver men from 

the fear of death, and rid them of all apprehension of a future 
retribution. ' Did men but know that there was a fixed limit to 
their woes, they would be able, in some measure, to defy the 
religious fictions and menaces of the poets ; but now, since we 
must fear eternal punishment at death, there is no mode, no 
means of resisting them.' To emancipate men from 'these ter- 
rors of the mind,' they must be taught that the soul is mortal, 
and dissolves with the body — that ' death is nothing to us, for 
that which is dissolved is devoid of sensation, and that which is 
devoid of sensation is* nothing to us.' " 

" It is evident that such a system of philosophy outrages the 
purest and noblest sentiments of humanity, and in fact condemns 
itself. It was born of selfishness and social degeneracy, and 
could perpetuate itself only in an age of corruption, because it 
inculcated the lawfulness of sensuality and the impunity of 
justice. Its existence at this precise period in Grecian history 
forcibly illustrates the truth that atheism is a disease of the 
heart rather than of the head. It seeks to set man free to follow 
12 



178 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

his own inclinations, by ridding him of all faith in a Divinity and 
in an immortal life, and thus exonerating him from all account- 
ability and all future retribution. But it failed to perceive that, 
in the most effectual manner, it annihilated all real liberty, and 
all true nobleness, and made of man an abject slave." 

The more fully and carefully we reflect upon the subject, the 
more clearly must we see that in the theistic conception of the 
universe must be found the basis of any system of morals ade- 
quate to the regulation of man's behavior, and to his progress 
in what elevates, refines, and happifies. To believe, as atheistic 
materialism teaches, that man is matter only, and that after a 
few fleeting years he is destined to inevitable return to uncon- 
sciousness as but a drop of the eternal uncaused ocean of matter 
on whose surface he was cast for a moment, is to believe that 
we are in a world that has no moral governor, which exists with- 
out a purpose, and into which we ourselves, as ephemeral creat- 
ures, have come under conditions that utterly exclude the con- 
ception of any moral end for which we exist. It is no less a 
necessity in the nature of the case, than a fact practically dem- 
onstrated again and again, that the tendency of the atheistic 
conception of the world is to the regression, the degradation, 
the destruction of the race. It destroys incentive to self-im- 
provement, leaves no stimulus to effort for the common weal, 
and excludes all hope of a better day through the subjection of 
human wills to a divine will that orders all things for harmony, 
righteousness, and well-being. 

Over against the Epicurean atheism, we have the Stoic philos- 
ophy acknowledging God, asserting creation (but in a sense that 
practically indentifies the Creator and the universe), and placing 
man's well-being in conformity to the will of his Creator. The 
Stoic taught, as Diogenes Laertiu^ tells us in his Lives of the Phi- 
losophers, that " God is a living being, immortal, rational, perfect, 
and intellectual in his happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of 
evil ; having a foreknowledge of the world, and of all that is in 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 79. 

the world." As Aurelius asserts, "God made men to this end 
that they might be happy ; as becomes his fatherly care of us, 
he placed our good and our evil in those things which are in our 
own power." As Laertius asserts, " God is a being of a certain 
quality, having for his peculiar manifestations universal sub- 
stance. He is a being imperishable, who never had any genera- 
tion, being the maker of the arrangement and the order we see ; 
who at certain periods of time absorbs all substance into himself, 
and then reproduces it from himself" 

The foregoing doctrines of the Stoics are an attempt at com- 
bining the idea of creation with that of the eternity of the sub- 
stance of the universe, the doctrine of Laertius seeming to 
identify the substance of the universe with that of the Creator. 
The idea of the eternity of matter is discernible as the one line 
of thought holding unbroken through the almost endless jarring 
systems of heathen philosophy regarding the nature and origin 
of the visible universe. The fundamental assumptions of the 
heathen philosophy is that out of nothing nothing can come, 
and that whatever is can not return to nothing, or must con- 
tinue to exist. So the Brahmins teach to-day : " The ignorant 
assert that the universe, in the beginning, did not exist in its 
author, and that it was created out of nothing. O ye, whose 
hearts are pure, how could something arise out of nothing?" 
This conception of the existence of the universe in its author, 
and of a subsequent production from his substance, seems to 
indicate an Indian origin of the Stoic philosophy, which, like 
that of India, is essentially pantheistic. From Greek philoso- 
phy Jewish theologians and Christian fathers borrowed the same 
ideas of the impossibility of creation out of nothing, and of the 
necessary eternity of the substance of things. Accordingly the 
Book of Wisdom (chap. xi. 17) asserts that " the almighty hand 
of the Lord created the world out of unfashioned matter." 
Justin Martyr affirms that such was the general belief of his 
day, " For," says he, " that the word of God formed the world 



l8o DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

out of unfashioned matter, Moses distinctly asserts, Plato and his 
adherents maintain, and ourselves have been taught to believe." 

A profound thinker of the early part of the current century, 
distinguished alike as a scientist and a biblical critic, speaking 
of the attempt of the Christian fathers to harmonize Platonism 
and the doctrine of creation as taught in Genesis, declares that 
" the text of Moses, when accurately examined, will be found to 
lead us to a very different conclusion," as asserting in the first 
and second verses, " first, an absolute creation of the heaven and 
the earth, which, we are expressly told, took place foremost, or in 
the beginning ; next, the condition of the earth, when it was 
thus primarily created, was amorphous and waste, or in the 
words of the text, ' without form and void ; ' and, thirdly, the 
earliest creative effort to reduce it from this shapeless and void 
or waste condition into a state of order and productiveness — the 
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The same 
critic observes that while the word rendered " created," in the 
opening of Genesis, is frequently used in the Scriptures to 
denote the production of something out of material already 
existing, " we have sufficient proof that it was also understood 
of old to import emphatically, like our own word ' create,' an 
absolute formation out of nothing." " Maimonides, expressly 
tells us," he affirms, " that it was thus understood in the passage 
before us (Gen. i. i) as well as in all others that have a reference 
to it, by the ancient Hebrews ; while Origen affirms that such 
was its import among many of the Christian fathers, whatever 
might be the opinion of the rest, and forcibly objects to the 
passage quoted from the Book of Wisdom, as a book not 
admitted into the established canon of Scripture." 

To the theory of the eternity of matter as unproduced self- 
existent substance of the universe, which substance the atheistic 
materialist declares the sole substance known to us; and the 
theory of the emanation of the universe from the substance of 
the Creator, which, in its boldest and baldest form teaches that 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. l8l 

" the universe is the Creator, proceeds from the Creator, exists 
in him, and returns into him, " we may add that of idealism, 
which holds to the non-existence of a material world, or, in 
other words, that pure spirit is the only entity, the ideas of 
which spirit have no outward and material entities correspond- 
ing to them. Of this school in modern times were Bishop Berke- 
ley, characterized as "a man in whom every virtue dwelt," and 
David Hume, worthy of his designation of " his prince of skep- 
tics." Berkeley's fundamental assumption is that " the various 
sensations, or ideas, imprinted on the sense, can not exist other- 
wise than in the mind perceiving them." All our sensations 
can be accounted for, Berkeley held, as rationally on the suppo- 
sition of some kind of force operating from without upon the 
mind, as on the supposition of the existence of an entity that 
we call matter, and so referred all our modifications of con- 
sciousness to the will of God as the source of the force produc- 
ing them. Hume advanced a step farther, arguing that if it be 
unnecessary to suppose an external material entity as the basis 
of the phenomena of sensation, it is equally unnecessary to infer 
the existence of a hidden entity called mind, since all we can 
know by inward experience are the fleeting states of the con- 
sciousness. And so, Hume argued, of the nature of things we 
know absolutely nothing at all, thus carrying idealism to the 
extreme of a complete agnosticism. It might on first thought 
be supposed that a theory so remote from and contradictory to 
the common sense of mankind, as is the idealistic philosophy, 
could exert but little influence upon the public mind, but, 
wielded by so acute a reasoner as Hume, it was the means of 
destroying confidence in the ordinary grounds of belief to such 
a degree as to threaten the foundations of social and civil order; 
and Frederick Schlegel, a German student of philosophical 
questions, declared that " since the time of Hume, nothing more 
has been attempted in England than to erect all sorts of bul- 
warks against the practical influence of his destructive skepti- 



1 82 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

cism, and to maintain, by various substitutes and aids, the pile 
of moral principle uncorrupted and entire." 

Without design of explaining or even of naming the varied 
philosophical theories which attempt a solution of the problem 
of the origin of the universe, a few references have been made 
rather to suggest and to insist that, of all the theories proposed, 
not one can satisfy the demands of reason as to this fundamental 
question of philosophy. Modern systems are practically but 
repetitions of those known thousands of years ago. vEschylus, 
who declared that " Zeus is earth, air, heaven, and altogether 
all," was as intelligent a pantheist as Spinoza* according to 
whom there is one infinite substance, and only one, and as infi- 
nite is divine, while man and other finite beings are parts of this 
one infinite substance. The materialism of the nineteenth cent- 
ury, as an explanation of the universe, is no more satisfactory 
than that of the old Epicureans. For the most part these mul- 
titudinous systems, as did the kine of the vision of Egypt's 
king, devour one another, so that we may well take up the 
inquiry of the author of a Comparative History of Philosophical 
Systems: "About what, then, are philosophers agreed? What 
single point have they placed beyond dispute ? " Of many of 
these systems we may say what a critic has said of Kant's 
Critique of Pure Reason: "Announced with pomp, received with 
fanaticism, disputed about with fury, after having overthrown 

* Strictly speaking, pantheism is, as A. M. Fairbairne observes, a mod- 
ern theory, as the word also is modern. Spinoza did not regard the uni- 
verse as God, but, rather, "construed the world through God," and hence 
his system was "most ethical in character, and sublimed by the most 
exalted religious ideas." His system is manifestly the product of an 
effort, as is the Leibnitzian idea of "pre-established harmony," to get rid 
of the seemingty irreconcilable contradictions of duality as recognized in 
the common conceptions of mind and matter, the finite and the infinite, 
Creator and creature. But the author of the article, Spinoza, in the 
Library of Universal Knowledge, declares Spinozism to teach that " there 
is no real difference between mind, as represented by God, and matter, as 
represented by nature," and that " God neither thinks nor creates." 



CUMBERLAND PBESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 83 

antagonistic systems, it could no longer support itself upon its 
own foundations, and has produced no permanent result." 
From these fruitless and discordant efforts at the solution of a 
problem which must forever, it would seem, baffle and transcend 
the powers of unaided reason, it is restful to faith and to reason 
to turn to the sublime declaration of the word which proclaims 
that, "In the beginning God created the heaven and 

THE EARTH." 

Notwithstanding the multiplicity of theories of the nature 
and origin of the universe, the great body of Christian thought 
of to-day maintains that the universe is finite, dependent, 
created, and that its Author is a Supreme Intelligence, inde- 
pendent of the creation planned for a benevolent end by his 
infinite wisdom and goodness, and realized through his omnipo- 
tence; while over against the Christian doctrine stands the 
atheistic conception of the eternity of the substance of the 
universe, and of an endless series of phenomena attributable 
solely to the nature of that substance and its inherent forces. 
On the one side it may be said that there are no known proper- 
ties of matter, no facts apparent in the universe, no laws of 
human reason that can be assumed as valid premises for con- 
cluding that the world is eternal. Herbert Spencer is credited 
with saying that "the eternity, or self-existence, of matter is 
unthinkable," and in his First Principles he justly observes that 
"the assertion that the universe is self-existent does not really 
carry us a step beyond the cognition of its present existence ; 
and so leaves us with a mere re-statement of the mystery." On 
the other hand, no principles of reason, no fact in the world 
about us, no properties of matter, no truths of science require 
us to reject the theory of creation in the biblical sense, as being 
absurd or self-contradictory. As great intellects as the world 
has known have accepted the Scriptural idea of creation as the 
most plausible explanation of the universe. "So far, indeed, 
from intimating any absurdity in the idea that matter may be 



184 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

created out of nothing by the interposition of an Almighty 
Intelligence," says a profound thinker, " reason seems, on the 
contrary, rather to point out to us the possibility of an equal 
creation out of nothing of ten thousand other substances, of 
which each may be the medium of life and happiness to infinite 
orders of being, while every one may, at the same time, be as 
distinct from every other, as the whole may be from matter, or 
as matter is from what, without knowing any thing further of, 
we commonly denominate spirit." 

So far as it lies open to our knowledge, the universe is full of 
what we must regard the products of intelligence, which fact 
necessitates the admission of a Creator and of creation in some 
sense of the term. From the wonderfully endowed invisible 
atoms, with their affinities in definite and multiple proportions, 
up to vast globes swinging around vaster centers of heat and 
light by virtue of which they are abodes of life and activity, in 
all parts the universe plainly exhibits itself to us as a plan 
executed in view of a foreseen end. Between the all-pervading 
ether and the eye, between the air and the ear, and in thousands 
of other instances there are correlations that can not be ration- 
ally interpreted except as they are referred to creative intelli- 
gence that designed the human body as an instrument by which 
the mind of man is to know, enjoy, and use the world about 
him. Professor Pritchard, a naturalist of the highest reputa- 
tion, declares : " From what I know through my own specialty, 
both from geometry and experiment, of the structure of the 
lenses of the human eye, I do not believe that any amount of 
evolution extending through any amount of time, could have 
issued in the production of that most beautiful and complicated 
instrument, the human eye. The most perfect, and. at the same 
time the most difficult, optical contrivance known is the pow- 
erful achromatic object-glass of a microscope ; its structure is 
the long unhoped-for result of the ingenuity of many powerful 
minds, yet in complexity and in perfection it falls infinitely 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 85 

below the structure of the eye. Disarrange any one of the 
curvatures of the many surfaces, or distances, or densities of the 
latter; or worse, disarrange its incomprehensible self-adaptive 
powers, the like of which is possessed by the handiwork of 
nothing human, and all the opticians in the world could not 
tell you what is the correlative alteration necessary to repair it, 
and, still less, to improve it as a natural selection is presumed 
to imply." But if it be granted that "evolution" did issue in 
the production of the eye, and that " natural selection " is a 
force under which the evolution went forward, it still seems im- 
possible to evade the conviction that through the method and 
the force an intelligence was working out an ideal designed to 
enable man to look upon the universe that spreads around him. 
In the argument for creative wisdom and power, method of for- 
mations is nothing, design is every thing. It is not more impos- 
sible to believe that human hands and tools and mechanical 
principles and forces could have produced a steamship without 
mind having conceived the ideal, and guided the hands in the 
use of the tools, than it is to believe that the world about us, 
filled on all sides with admirable adaptations, could have re- 
sulted from any unintelligent and unconscious forces, without 
mind which planned the wondrous whole and guided the forces 
which worked it out in this goodly frame. 

Scarcely less perplexing than the problem of the origin and 
the nature of the universe is that of the Creator's relation to the 
universe, those who admit a Creator differing widely in their 
views in respect to the latter point. One school of ancient phi- 
losophers excluded their gods from participation in the produc- 
tion and the management of the visible universe, leaving them 
to undisturbed blessedness in their empyrean abode. Thus, 
Lucretius, in his marvelous poem, depicts an atheistic world, 
though declared to have been himself " perhaps more profoundly 
religious in spirit than any other Roman that ever lived, save Au- 
gustine." This error of theism in conceiving God as outside of 



1 86 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

a universe under the sway of unconscious material forces, is the 
source, as Mr. Fiske asserts in his monogram on The Idea of 
God as Affected by Modern Knowledge, of ancient atheism ; and 
" we shall find the cause of modern atheism," the same author as- 
serts, " to be quite similar." Plato, regarding the world as 
essentially vile, " separates the Creator from his creation by the 
whole breadth of infinitude," and the Gnostics, adopting Plato's 
doctrine of the vileness of the world, accounted for the action 
of the spiritual God on the material universe by calling in me- 
diating aeons partly material and partly spiritual, or else sup- 
posed the world to be a product of the principle of evil. This 
error of Augustine, as charged by Mr. Fiske, has fastened upon 
modern thought, " his intense feeling of man's wickedness 
dragging him irresistibly " to extreme views in this direction. 
The following passage from Mr. Fiske's Idea of God, though 
containing sentiments we can not adopt, is nevertheless sugges- 
tive of the sources of difficulties that have perplexed candid 
inquirers for the truth on these great questions : 

" In his (Augustine's) views of original sin he represents hu- 
manity as cut off from all relationship with God, who is depicted 
as a crudely anthropomorphic Being far removed from the uni- 
verse and accessible only through the mediating offices of an 
organized Church. Compared with the thoughts of the Greek 
fathers this was a barbaric conception, but it was suited alike to 
the lower grade of culture in western Europe, and to the Latin 
political genius, which in' the decline of the Empire was already 
occupying itself with its great and beneficent work of construct- 
ing an imperial church. For these reasons the Augustinian 
theology prevailed, and in the Dark Ages it became so deeply 
inwrought into the innermost fibers of Latin Christianity that it 
remains dominant to-day alike in Catholic and Protestant 
Churches. With few exceptions every child born of Christian 
parents in Europe or in America grows up with an idea of God, 
the outlines of which were engraven upon men's minds by Au- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 187 

gustine fifteen centuries ago. Nay, more, it is hardly too much 
to say that three fourths of the body of doctrine currently 
known as Christianity, unwarranted by Scripture, and never 
dreamed of by Christ or his apostles, first took coherent shape 
in the writings of this mighty Roman, who was separated from 
the apostolic age by an interval of time like that which sepa- 
rates us from the invention of printing and the discovery of 
America. The idea of God upon which all this Augustinian 
doctrine is based is the idea of a Being actuated by human pas- 
sions and purposes, localizable in space, and utterly remote from 
that machine, the universe in which we live, and upon which he 
acts intermittently by the suspension of what are called natural 
laws. So deeply has this conception penetrated the thought of 
Christendom that we continually find it at the bottom of the 
speculations and arguments of men who would warmly repu- 
diate it as thus stated in its naked outline. It dominates the 
reasonings alike of believers and skeptics, of theists and athe- 
ists; it underlies at once the objections raised by orthodoxy 
against each new step in science, and the assaults made by 
materialism upon every religious conception of the world ; and 
thus it is chiefly responsible for that complicated misunder- 
standing which, by a lamentable confusion of thought, is com- 
monly called ' the conflict between science and religion.' " 

Over against the Augustinian conception of God's relation to 
the universe, as depicted in the foregoing, Mr. Fiske thus pre- 
sents what he designates as Cosmic Theism : " We are now pre- 
pared to see that the theological objection urged against the 
Newtonian and Darwinian theories has its roots in that imper- 
fect kind of theism which Augustine did so much to fasten upon 
the Western World. Obviously if Leibnitz and Agassiz had been 
educated in that higher theism shared by Clement and Athana- 
sius in ancient times with Spinoza and Goethe in later days — if 
they had been accustomed to conceive of God as immanent in 
the universe and eternally creative — then the argument which 



1 88 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

they urged with so much feeling would never have occurred to 
them. To conceive of ' physical forces ' as powers of which the 
action could in any wise be ' substituted ' for the action of Deity 
would in such case have been absolutely impossible. . . . The 
higher or Athanasian theism knows nothing of secondary 
causes in a world where every event flows directly from the 
eternal First Cause. It knows nothing of physical forces save 
as immediate manifestations of the omnipresent creative power 
of God. . . . Once really admit the conception of an ever-present 
God, without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and it 
becomes self-evident that the law of gravitation is but an ex- 
pression of a particular mode of divine action. And what is 
thus true of one law is true of all laws. The thinker in whose 
mind divine action is thus identified with orderly action, and to 
whom a really irregular phenomenon would seem like a mani- 
festation of sheer diabolism, foresees in every possible extension 
of knowledge a fresh confirmation of his faith in God. To him, 
no part of the universe is godless ; . . . . and each act of scien- 
tific explanation but reveals an opening through which shines 
the glory of the eternal Majesty." 

In his efforts to look beyond mere phenomena and secondary 
causes, and to know the essence underlying phenomena, and to 
find that first cause through which all phenomena may be inter- 
preted as a unity, man is influenced, and must be influenced, by 
the received philosophy of each particular age. In this age of 
special studies there are "terrific dangers," as Joseph Cook 
observes, "of a fragmentary view of God." Error upon a 
question so fundamental as that of the relation of the Creator to 
the universe, and especially of his relation to man as a creature 
dependent, rational, and a subject of moral law, must be far- 
reaching in its influence as a vitiating element. While Mr. 
Fiske, in accordance with the best thought of the age, discovers 
that Mind is the ultimate fact, the primal cause which affords a 
rational explanation of the universe, he seems to us to so dis- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 189 

pense with secondary causes as to identify God and nature, and 
thus to have gone so far from Augustine as to land, with 
Spinoza and Goethe, in absolute pantheism. His theory of the 
divine immanence implies a universe without God, or God with- 
out a universe. The personal living God is taken away, and a 
deified universe is substituted. In gravitation and other imper- 
sonal forces eternally operating, he finds the only thing to be 
recognized as the will of God. According to his theory, 
" Matter is but the generalized name we give to those modifica- 
tions which we refer immediately to an unknown something 
outside of ourselves," while "the eternal, source of phenomena," 
ever active, "eternally creating," is the " Force," the " Reality," 
the " infinite and eternal Power," the " Universal Life," of which 
universal life all living things are but " specialized forms," and 
these "specialized forms" the products of an "evolution" neces- 
sitated by the persistence of force, and operating eternally and 
everywhere, through which evolution man, " the crown and 
glory of the universe and the chief object of divine care, yet 
still the lame and halting creature, loaded with a brute inner 
itance of original sin," is to experience ultimate salvation 
"through ages of moral discipline." 

While the theory of creation, and of the Creator's relation to 
the world, thus briefly sketched seems to us open to very grave 
objections, especially as identifying the life of the universe with 
the life of God, and thereby making all creatures, and all ac- 
tions whether good or bad, but phenomena of the one divine sea 
of infinite existence, and, seemingly at least, necessarily exclud- 
ing the idea of human responsibility, Mr. Fiske is certainly to 
be credited with having produced a most thoughtful discussion 
of " the idea of God, as it is affected by modern knowledge ; " 
and the following paragraph from his work is herein quoted, 
alike for its intrinsic excellence and from a desire to be just to 
its author : 

" The infinite and eternal Power that is manifested in every 



I90 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

pulsation of the universe is none other than the living God. 
We may exhaust the resources of metaphysics in debating how 
far his nature may fitly be expressed in terms applicable to the 
psychical nature of Man ; such vain attempts will only serve to 
show we are dealing with a theme that must ever transcend our 
finite powers of conception. But of some things we may feel 
sure. Humanity is not a mere local incident in an endless and 
aimless series of cosmical changes. The events of the universe 
are not the work of chance, neither are they the outcome of 
blind necessity. Practically there is a purpose in the world 
whereof it is our highest duty to learn the lesson, however well 
or ill we may fare in rendering a scientific account of it. When 
from the dawn of life we see all things working together toward 
the evolution of the highest spiritual attributes of Man, we 
know, however the words may stumble in which we try to say 
it, that God is in the deepest sense a moral Being. The ever- 
lasting source of phenomena is none other than the infinite 
Power that makes for righteousness. Thou canst not by 
searching find him out; yet put thy trust in him, and 
against thee the gates of hell shall not prevail; for there is- 
neither wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the 
Eternal." 

We have dwelt upon this phase of our subject because of the 
tendency of the day, notably with writers of one scientific 
school, toward such a conception of divine immanence as una- 
voidably leads to the identification of God and nature, and thus 
utterly takes away the God of our fathers and of the Bible. If 
the universe be but an " evolution of the substance of God," 
and the "cosmical forces" are all the "will of God" of which 
we can have any knowledge, then indeed have we no God whom 
we can rationally worship, nor is there a divine compassion that 
cares for men. Poets, novelists, and mystics have tinged our 
literature with the pernicious sentiment which identifies the 
human soul with what they choose to call the general soul of 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 191 

the universe or, with mystic pietism, the Infinite Spirit, the out- 
come of which is 

" That each, who seems a separate whole, 
Should move his rounds, and, fusing all 
The skirts of self again, should fall 
Remerging in the general soul." 

The thoughtful scientist sees that this visible universe, as 
transient and dependent in all its parts, must rest upon a power 
back of itself, not less really and certainly than the steamer 
rests upon the ocean's bosom. "We are ever," says Herbert 
Spencer, " in the presence of an infinite and eternal energy, 
from which all things proceed, manifested within and without 
us." What is this eternal energy of the philosopher but the 
power of the living God whose is the " hand which bears crea- 
tion up?" The conception of the absolute immanence of the 
Creator in the universe, as it is taught by philosophers of the 
school of Mr. Fiske, is but a step, on one side, from rigid pan- 
theism, and, on the other, from blank materialistic atheism. 
We have elsewhere called attention to the fact that the doctrine 
of universal, unconditional divine decree of whatsoever comes 
to pass is essentially pantheistic, and as utterly excludes the 
ideas of freedom of will, human responsibility, and moral gov- 
ernment, as does absolute atheistic necessity. We must not 
exclude God from his universe, nor confound him with the 
universe. He indeed made the world and all that is therein, 
impressing matter and the finite mind, alike products of his 
power, with the attributes now immanent in them. These forces 
of matter and attributes of mind are as God willed them to be ; 
but to confound these forces and attributes with the will of God, 
is virtually to substitute for the God of the Bible an impersonal 
unconscious intelligence working in the universe. God indeed 
notes the fall of the sparrow, but a sparrow is not a "specialized 
form " of the divine substance, nor is the force which controls 
its fall a specific and immediate volition of God. "We must 



I92 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

not," says Dr. Valentine, " fall into the mistake of some theistic 
writers, who have attributed each individual and separate event 
in nature to a direct act of the divine will or energy. This 
error annihilates the reality of secondary causation. It is not 
only plain contradiction to all we know of the constitution of 
nature, but it vacates the very postulate on which the theistic 
argumentation is based. Natural forces are real, and the laws 
of their action are made immanent in the nature of the elements 
or organism in which they show themselves. But they are the 
real products and ordinations of the Deity who gave them their 
reality or appointed them their modes or laws. . . . They are 
the sequences according to which God ordinarily acts, yet their 
results come, not as direct, but as mediate products of the 
divine power. . . . God is above nature and below it, without it 
and within it, yet never a part of it. He is not nature, but 
nature is from him, and subsists by him." 

Finally, it is in place to repeat that the " idea of God as 
affected by modern knowledge " is not the idea of a power 
identical with the forces of nature, nor of a power absolutely 
and eternally immanent in the universe; but of an infinite 
Being who is omnipotent and all-wise, the Source of all finite 
being, Cause of causes, the absolute Mind, in which only can be 
found an explanation of the wisdom and unity of the universe, 
who is Creator, Presever, Benefactor, God over all, blessed for 
evermore ! 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 1 93 



CHAPTER VI. 

CREATION — CONTINUED . 

"It pleased God, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal 
power, wisdom, and goodness, to create the world and all things therein, 
whether visible or invisible ; and all very good. 

"After God had made all other creatures, he created man in his own 
image ; male and female created he them, enduing them with intelligence, 
sensibility, and will ; they having the law of God written in their hearts, 
and power to fulfill it, being upright and free from all bias to evil." — Con- 
fession of Faith. 

"And God said, Let there be light ; and there was light." — Gen. i. 3. 

" Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, 
Whose hope is in the Lord his God : 
Which made heaven and earth, 
The sea, and all that in them is." — Psalm cxlvi. 5, 6. 

" For from him, and by him, and to him are all things : To him be the 
glory forever." — Rom. xi. 36. 

" It is clearty delivered in the teachings of the apostles that there is one 
God who created and arranged all things, and who, when nothing existed, 
called all things into being — God from the first creation and foundation 
of the world .... But that we may believe on the authority of the Holy 
Scriptures that such is the case, hear how in the Maccabees, where the 
mother of seven martyrs exhorts her son to endure torture, this truth is 
confirmed ; for she says, ' I ask of thee, my son, to look at the heaven and 
the earth, and at all things which are in them, and, beholding these, to 
know that God made all these things when they did not exist.' In the 
book of the Shepherd also, in the first commandment, he speaks as fol- 
lows : ' First of all believe there is one God, who created and arranged all 
things, and made all things to come into existence, and out of a state of 
nothingness.' " — Origen. 

TT is nothing to our purpose in these chapters to advocate a 

theory of creation. As Dr. Briggs says of the Presbyterian 

Church, of the Cumberland Presbyterian it may be as truthfully 

said, that " it has no consensus of opinion on the doctrine of 

creation." The fact of a creation, as a theory of the origin of 

*3 



194 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

the universe, we hold in common with all Christians, as of fun- 
damental importance. Moses was a profound philosopher in 
rearing his great system of theistic teaching on the corner- 
stone, " God created the heaven and the earth." If Creator, 
then is God the sovereign ruler of the world. 

It is a blessed thing to so look upon the universe as to bring 
God near to us, and thus to rise to the comforting assurance that 

" The voice which rolls the stars along 
Spake all the promises." 

But the only adequate foundation for such assurance is the 
doctrine that we live in a real world, a world everywhere exhib- 
iting plan and purpose, " the work of an Almighty hand." 

Upon the Christian doctrine of creation, as held under all dis- 
pensations and through all the centuries of the Church, infidel- 
ity has made its most bitter assaults. The doctrine is to-day a 
battle-ground thick strewn with the weapons of agnosticism, 
positivism, materialism, and every other species of atheistic phi- 
losophy. Astronomy, geology, biology and other sciences have 
been claimed by the enemy, each being in its turn paraded upon 
the field as a Goliath about to utterly demolish the scriptural idea 
of there having been a beginning and a creation of the world. 
But Christian students have pushed their observations as far 
out into the heavens and as deep into the strata of the earth as 
any other class of men, and they return from their investiga- 
tions to assure us that rocks and stars alike, viewed in all the 
light of recent scientific progress, show unmistakably the foot- 
prints of a Creator. Marvelous, indeed, both in extent and 
richness, is the literature the recent discussion of this subject 
has produced. Even since the last preceding chapter was 
written the press has announced several valuable new works, 
one of which essays the arduous task of an explanation, as im- 
plied in its title, of The Genesis of the Universe. Did space 
permit, we would gladly enrich these pages with suitable para- 
graphs from some of the most instructive of recent works 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. I95 

relating to this discussion. But it is well for us continually to 
bear in mind that though we may know that the theory of crea- 
tion by an Omnipotent Intelligence, as an explanation of the 
universe, is the most rational explanation of what lies open to 
our very limited knowledge, the subject necessarily and infin- 
itely transcends the powers of the most gifted of human minds ; 
so that beyond very narrow limits all our endeavors at explain- 
ing the "genesis of the universe" find just rebuke in those 
remarkable words, as applicable to any Tyndall or Huxley of 
to-day, as to Job, whose arraignment of Providence was 
answered out of the whirlwind : " Who is this that darkeneth 
counsel by words without knowledge ? Gird up now thy loins 
like a man ; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. 
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? 
declare, if thou hast understanding. Who determined the 
measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the 
line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? 
or who laid the corner-stone thereof ; when the morning stars 
sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? . . . . 
Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days, and caused 
the dayspring to know his place ? . . . . Knowest thou the 
ordinance of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in 
the earth? .... Wilt thou also disannul my judgment? " 

IvOtze, the German philosopher, well says that " the two 
hostile parties should return to modesty — namely, that theolog- 
ical learning on the one side, and irreligious natural science on 
the other, should not assert that they have exact knowledge 
about so much which they neither do know nor can know." 
The theories possible respecting creation are comprised, as 
L,otze maintains, in these three — namely, (1) a " consistent de- 
velopment of the nature of God," (2) a product of his will, (3) 
the product of a creative act. Excluding the first, which " ap- 
pears in all the emanation theories of ancient and modern 
times," L,otze makes the following judicious and most valuable 



I96 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

remarks touching the religious bearing of the theory which, 
claiming science as its basis, would displace a Creator by what it 
terms evolution : 

" So far as this view endeavors to exclude a God who rules 
without principle in blind arbitrariness, it is correct ; and in 
this respect corresponds also to our religious need. But we 
must resist with the greatest possible decisiveness the further 
apotheosis of the notion of ' development ' consequent upon this 
view, which it is customary just now to express and to extol 
with such great emphasis, as though it were identical, as a 
matter of course, with all that is great and sublime and holy. 

"If it were only a question concerning a theoretical explana- 
tion of the course of the world, then such a conception would 
be satisfactory. But it is wholly useless from the religious 
point of view, because it leads consistently to nothing but a 
thorough-going determinism, according to which not only is 
every thing that must happen, in case certain conditions occur, 
appointed in pursuance of general laws ; but according to which 
even the successive occurrence of these conditions, and conse- 
quently the whole of history with all its details, is predeter- 
mined. 

" In such a mechanical contrivance there is no place whatever 
for any ' freedom ' or ' activity,' or for an effort that shall pro- 
duce aught which does not originate from the mechanism itself. 
Religious opinion assumes rather that, while there are universal 
laws, without whose efficacy no f design ' whatever would be 
able by definite means to attain to a definite goal, there is how- 
ever at the same time, on the basis and in the domain of this 
reign of law, a free, voluntary activity, which, by the use and 
combination of the given elements acting in accordance with 
law, produces that even which would have no existence without 
such activity. 

" The above-mentioned assumption has its difficulties. Until, 
liowever, it is shown decisively to be impossible, the religious 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 197 

feeling will never return to the thought of an ' undesigned, in- 
evitable development ' of the world from the nature of God, but 
will derive it from an act of the divine will, without which it 
would not have existed." 

So, as it seems to us, every phase of materialism, as a theory 
of the world, involves principles utterly subversive of all ideas 
of freedom and responsibility in any and every sense in which 
these are essential to religion. Materialism is fatalistic deter- 
minism. Though neither blind " inevitable development" nor 
materialism is necessarily exclusive of the idea of God, they are 
alike exclusive of the idea of religion ; for, as Sir William 
Hamilton declares, " the assertion of absolute necessity, is 
virtually the negation of a moral universe, and consequently of 
the Moral Governor of a moral universe." 

So, as the subject is pursued, will it appear that any false 
system of philosophy relating to the fundamental principles of 
morals and religion will of necessity vitiate the whole stream 
flowing therefrom, and entail upon society the most direful 
calamities. False philosophy is a powerful agency for evil, 
working unrest in the public mind, wresting thought and feel- 
ing from safe moorings, slackening the moral bands which hold 
men in peaceable and helpful relations, and paving the way for 
stormy revolution. One's life may indeed be better than his 
theory, but his theory, if false, must nevertheless work evil in 
the world of thought and action. Hence, we have insisted 
again and again on the Christian idea of a divine origin of the 
world, in which theory only is it possible to find an enduring 
basis for the idea of moral government. This foundation de- 
stroyed, humanity's prospect is pessimistic indeed. " Once 
thoroughly established," says de Pressense, " this conclusion 
(the possibility of a divine and moral world) suffices to secure to 
humanity its most precious possession — that higher life, apart 
from which man misses all that distinguishes him from the 
brute, and is without any light beyond the grave, without any 



I98 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

compass on his voyage through life, without morality, without 
law, without liberty, given up to the chances of brute force, a 
helpless and degraded thing." 

Christian teaching, then, is that the world in which we live 
is a real one, that our cognitive faculties, within limits required 
by our well-being, are reliable, and not imposed on us to deceive; 
that, as dependent and finite, the world must have had a cause ; 
that, as exhibiting order, adaptation, and design, it must have 
had an intelligent cause, which cause is an Omnipotent Intelli- 
gence, "who spake and it was done, who commanded and it 
stood fast." And what is the attitude of this doctrine in rela- 
tion to the wonderful progress in science, which, along so many 
lines of investigation, has so notably distinguished the last half 
a century? The following propositions will, it seems to us, 
fairly and substantially express the truth upon this point : 

1. Science has illustrated and confirmed the position that the 
world must have had a beginning, in other words, that it is not 
eternal, and, therefore, that it must have had a cause. 

The universe, as we know it, exhibits only that which is 
finite, dependent, transient. Every phenomenon is dependent 
on a cause, and that cause on an antecedent cause. It is no 
more true, as science views the world, that insects and flowers 
are ephemeral, that man neeth as a shadow and continueth not, 
and that the human race can not have been always in existence, 
than it is that the earth itself once was not, that the great solar 
system once was not, that the parent orb dispensing light and 
heat is, as the poet declares, but "a transient meteor in the sky." 
Astronomy has opened up to us almost infinite depths of the as- 
tral universe, to show us that " even now, at this very time, 
there exist in the depths of space all orders of suns — suns still 
growing ; suns ruling over schemes already formed ; and, lastly, 
dead and used up suns, waiting, as it were, for some future 
change, by which they will be restored to activity and useful- 
ness." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 199 

In like manner, geology, reading the earth's history in its own 
records in the rock, tells us there was a time when man was not, 
a time when the present plants and animals were not, a time 
when an unbroken sea covered the globe, a time when life had 
not yet dawned, and when the conditions were such that life 
would have been impossible. Thus has science powerfully and 
most thoroughly refuted the scoffers of St. Peter's time, who, ar- 
guing from what they supposed the changeless stability of all 
parts of the universe, ridiculed the idea of the destruction of the 
earth, and of the formation of new heavens and a new earth. 
And so in many points science has risen to vindicate the Bible, 
to silence scoffers. Understood in the light of science, the nota- 
ble passage in Hebrews (i. 10-12) puts on transcendent beauty 
and significance: "And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid 
the foundation of the earth ; and the heavens are the works of 
thine hands. They shall perish, but thou continuest ; and they 
shall wax old as doth a garment. And as a vesture shalt thou 
fold them up, and they shall be changed ; but thou are the same, 
and thy years shall not fail." It is reason's demand and the 
Bible's assertion, that back of this ceaselessly shifting panorama 
we call the universe there is, not something only, but a some 
One, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, who reveals 
himself to his rational creation through these garments changed, 
laid aside, and renewed as may serve the purpose of his sover- 
eign will. 

2. Science proposes no adequate or plausible theory of the 
origin of the universe. 

Agnosticism denies that we can know any thing about God or 
any other cause of the universe. Positivism says we can know 
facts only, and that to inquire about causes is foolish. But sci- 
ence says there was a beginning, and reason postulates the 
necessity of a cause. Evolution comes forward to explain the 
mode in which and the forces by which great changes from low- 
er to higher have been effected in the organic life of the globe ; 



200 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

but even in this little domain of nature's vast field it can not 
make a beginning without God, for its most intelligent ex- 
pounders confess that they meet with numerous chasms, a dozen 
or more, which evolution is utterly unable to bridge. Here the 
advocates of the theory may themselves be allowed to testify. 
Darwin says: " In what manner the mental powers were first de- 
veloped in the lowest organisms is as hopeless an inquiry as 
how life first originated. These are problems for the distant 
future, if they are ever to be solved by man." Similarly he 
speaks of " the great break in the organic chain between man 
and his nearest allies, which can not be bridged over by any ex- 
tinct or living species." Darwin believed, however, that, with 
the start of one or a few primordial forms into which God had 
breathed life, evolution has worked out the manifold and won- 
drous varieties of life, from the monad up to man. 

Science has thrown no bridge across the chasm during the 
few years which have transpired since Tyndall, in a lecture on 
" The Origin of L,ife," gave utterance to the following : 

" This discourse is but a summing up of eight months of inces- 
sant labor. From the beginning to the end of the inquiry, 
there is not, as you have seen, a shadow of evidence in favor of 
spontaneous generation. There is, on the contrary, overwhelm- 
ing evidence against it; but do not carry away with you the 
notion, sometimes erroneously ascribed to me, that I deem spon- 
taneous generation impossible, or that I wish to limit the power 
of matter in relation to life. My views on this subject ought to 
be well known. But possibility is one thing, and proof is an- 
other ; and when in our day I seek for experimental evidence of 
the transformation of the non-living into the living, I am led in- 
exorably to the conclusion that no such evidence exists, and 
that, in the lowest as well as the highest of organized creatures, 
the method of nature is, that life shall be the issue of anteced- 
ent life." 

Professor Huxley has conceded that " of the causes which 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 201 

have led to the origination of living matter it may be said that 
we know absolutely nothing. . . . The present state of knowl- 
edge furnishes us with no link between the living and the not- 
living." 

To the foregoing utterances of men whose authority as scien- 
tists will not be questioned, we may add the remarkable lan- 
guage of Sir William Thompson in his inaugural address when 
assuming the presidential chair of the British Association, at a 
meeting in Edinburgh, but a few years ago : 

"A very ancient speculation, still clung to by many naturalists 
(so much so, that I have a choice of modern terms to quote in 
expressing it), supposes that, under meteorological conditions 
very different from the present, dead matter may have run to- 
gether or crystallized or fermented into 'germs of life,' or 
'organic cells,' or 'protoplasm.' But science brings a vast mass 
of inductive evidence against this hypothesis of spontaneous 
generation, as you have heard from my predecessor in the presi- 
dential chair. Careful enough scrutiny has, in every case up to 
the present day, discovered life as antecedent to life. Dead 
matter can noj; become living without coming under the influ- 
ence of matter previously alive. This seems to me as sure a 
teaching of science as the law of gravitation." 

Since, then, it is absurd to regard the universe, which is de- 
pendent and ever changing, as an eternal series of progression 
and regression; since the phenomena of life and intelligence 
upon our globe exhibit gaps which can not be bridged by any 
laws or forces known to science ; and since if evolution can be 
shown to account satisfactorily, by forces working in nature, for 
the origin of life and the vast and varied expansion of the or- 
ganic kingdoms, such an endowment of matter would necessitate 
an intelligent endowing cause, science teaches nothing that 
invalidates, but much that fortifies the scriptural testimony that, 
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Nor 
need the doctrine of the divine creation of man and his world 



202 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

fear any startling surprises that yet await the progress of 
science ; for if it turn out that there is truth in the dogmatic as- 
sumption of Huxley that "the whole existing world once lay 
potentially in the cosmic vapor, and that from a knowledge of 
the properties of its molecules it would have been possible to 
predict the present state of the British flora and fauna as easily 
as one might tell what would happen to the vapor of the breath 
on a winter's day," yet would reason insist that it required infi- 
nite wisdom and infinite power to endow " cosmic vapor" with 
potency to work out a scheme so stupendous in its proportions 
and rational in its ends. 

But science has most certainly taught us : 

3. That the creation, in the sense in which it has usually been 
conceived, occurred at a period vastly longer ago than biblical 
scholars have been accustomed to assign. 

So late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, the 
English Parliament directed Archbishop Usher to settle the 
question as to the exact date of the creation, whereupon that 
eminent ecclesiastic and biblical scholar assigned the event to 
October 25, B.C. 4004. The Westminster divines held the cre- 
ative days to be literal days of twenty-four hours each, and 
almost countless have been the well-meant but fruitless efforts 
to reconcile that interpretation of Genesis with the now unques- 
tioned teachings of geology. It would require many pages to 
even state intelligently all the geological proofs of the earth's 
high antiquity. In its own rocky strata it chronicles a history 
which can not be questioned, embracing vast cycles of time 

during which — 

" Many a change both wild and strange 
Reversed the sea and land." 

In the earth's records of its vast and varied life-periods we 
encounter facts innumerable which demand for their production 
periods of time beyond our comprehension. During a half day 
spent in the British Museum, London, it was the writer's privi- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 203 

lege and never-to-be-forgotten satisfaction to stroll through a 
long series of apartments in a great room allotted to a fossillifer- 
ous representation of the life-history of the globe. Turning 
from the azoic rocks in one end, we find, on the right and on the 
left, rocks containing the rudimentary forms of the earliest life 
period ; a few steps brings us to the limestones literally packed 
with the fossils of the molluscs which flourished in warm and 
widespread seas ; and now the rocks on either hand tell us of 
the wonderful dynasty of the fishes ; passing on, we are amid 
the records of the great plant period of the earth, during 
which the vast coal measures were stored away for man's use ; 
and now there gleam upon us the huge, weird forms of the age 
of the reptiles ; beyond these we are amid the great beasts of a 
by-gone age — the megatherium, the dinotherium, and other 
gigantic creatures who have now no like upon the earth ; and 
now we have the progenitors of the beasts of to-day, and last 
of all, with his associated animals on either hand, there is in the 
center of the end of the hall, directly facing us as he stares out 
of his rocky tomb, the famous fossil man from Guadaloupe. Of 
all the interesting impressions associated with this panoramic 
view of perhaps millions of years of earth's history, no one was 
more vivid than that of the palpable and startling confirmation 
it affords of the truth of the biblical declaration that man was 
the last and crowning work of the creation. How came Moses 
to anticipate by thousands of years the teachings of the science 
of to-day? 

If, now, we turn our attention from the earth beneath us to 
the heavens above us, on all sides we find manifold proofs of 
great antiquity. According to the nebular hypothesis, our Solar 
System has been evolved, by cosmic forces now in operation 
in the heavens, from an original nebula, or cloud of intensely 
heated gas, which extended beyond the orbit of the now outer- 
most planet. If the present system has resulted from cooling 
and contraction in the parent mass at rates for which present 



204 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

facts furnish any reliable data, the process has required, astron- 
omers tell us, from fifteen millions to twenty millions of years. 
We need not be startled at this demand for time — and astronomy 
could be allowed a few millions more still, for in the calendar of 
the Eternal a thousand years are but as one day. Time in his 
creative processes can not put the Creator far away from us. It 
seems equally true that the heavens have been of old, and that 
processes now known to be going on in the heavens " can have," 
as Professor Young declares, " but one ultimate result — that of 
absolute stagnation." "That in some way this end of things 
will result in a ' new heaven and a new earth ' is, of course, very 
probable," says the same writer, adding, "but science can yet 
present no explanation of the method." 

In concluding this part of our subject it may both suitably 
and truthfully be said that, if science has required great modifi- 
cation in our interpretation of the Mosaic account of creation, 
and has raised some difficulties which may not yet have been 
fully explained, the general effect of the fuller light of science 
thrown upon this ancient record is to reveal its almost infinite 
superiority to other cosmogonies of its time, and its incalculable 
and imperishable value to the race. The narrative of the crea- 
tion is to be interpreted by the purpose for which it was given, 
on which point Geike's Hours with the Bible has these judicious 
words : 

" It is clear from this abstract that it could not have been the 
design of God to give in the few opening lines of Genesis an 
exact scientific statement of the stages observed in creation. 
The sublime truth that nature was prepared step by step for the 
appearance of man, is the great lesson intended, and science cor- 
roborates it throughout. .... Man is recognized by the highest 
authorities of modern science as beyond question the ideal being 
toward whose appearance ' nature had been working for the ear- 
liest ages; a being, therefore, whose existence had been fore- 
ordained.' " 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 205 

So Professor Owen, the eminent naturalist, alluding to the 
manifold orders of life which have existed upon the globe, says : 
"The link by which they are connected is of a higher and 
immaterial nature ; and their connection is to be sought in the 
view of the Creator himself, whose aim in forming the earth, in 
allowing it to undergo the successive changes which geology 
has pointed out, and in creating, successively, all the different 
types of animals which have passed away, was to introduce man 
upon the surface of our globe. Man is the end toward which all 
the animal creation has tended." 

The following sentences from Dr. Foster's Old Testament Stud- 
ies, a work fresh from the press, are very pertinent and suggestive : 

" The Mosaic doctrine of creation places itself far above all 
heathen and non-biblical theories, by the sublime declaration, 
' In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;' though 
it is evident that the first chapter of Genesis and the subsequent 
inspired commentaries upon it are, so far as their form is con- 
cerned, addressed to the religious faith of the people, rather 
than to the scientific curiosity. It stands in direct contradiction 
to the atheistic theory of chance. The world was not produced 
by any process of self-generation, nor by the unintelligent 
action of impersonal forces, nor by many agents like the good 
and evil principles of the Persian theory, with which the Israel- 
ites may have become acquainted during the Babylonish captiv- 
ity. It implies, and it implied to the Israelitish mind, the eter- 
nity of the God whose existence it assumes, for, having created 
all things, he must be before all things ; it implied his omnipo- 
tence, for he who created the heavens and the earth could do 
any thing that was conceivable ; it implied his absolute freedom, 
for it represented him not only as beginning a new course of 
action, but as doing it by the free exercise of his own will ; it 
also implied to them his infinite wisdom, for such an orderly 
heaven and earth as was known even to the Israelites could be 
the product only of a mind of absolute intelligence." 



206 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Perhaps from no other point of view are we so clearly and 
profoundly impressed with the majesty, grandeur, and divine 
origin of the Scriptures, as when we compare their teachings 
respecting the origin and nature of the world with the pueril- 
ities and ludicrous absurdities found in the very best of heathen 
cosmogonies. Thus, the Hindu idea of the universe is fitly 
expressed in this paragraph : " Millions upon millions of cycles 
ago, this world came to be. It was made a flat triangular plain 
with high hills and mountains and great waters. It exists in 
several stories, and the whole mass is held up on the heads of 
elephants with their tails turned out, and their feet rest on the 
shell of an immense tortoise, and the tortoise on the coil of a 
great snake, and when those elephants shake themselves, that 
makes the earth quake." 

From the Babylonian doctrine of the origin of things we have 
this : " In the beginning all was darkness and water, and there- 
in were generated monstrous animals of strange and peculiar 
form. There were men with two wings, and some even with 
four and with two faces ; and others with two heads — a man's 
and a woman's — on the same body ; and there were men with 
the heads and horns of goats, and men with hoofs like horses, 
and some with the upper parts of a man joined to the lower 
parts of a horse, like centaurs ; and there were bulls with hu- 
man heads, dogs with four bodies and with the tails of fishes ; 
men and horses with dogs' heads ; creatures with the heads and 
bodies of horses, but with fishes' tails, mixing the forms of va- 
rious beasts." 

It is asserted by those competent to give a reliable judgment 
in the premises, that, in like manner, the teachings of the wisest 
uninspired men of antiquity, not excepting even those of Sen- 
eca, Socrates and Plato, Pythagoras or Aristotle, contain absurd- 
ities which are not only utterly disproved by well ascertained 
scientific facts, but are sheer nonsense in the judgment of en- 
lightened reason. In view of this solitary exception exhibited 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 207 

by the Bible, a recent writer inquires : " Who guarded this most 
ancient volume from the superstitions which corrupted chemis- 
try into alchemy, and astronomy into astrology ? Who taught the 
writer of the 104th Psalm to compose that grand poem on the 
wonders of the created world, and yet introduce not one of the 
scientific errors current in those days ? so that even von Hum- 
boldt was compelled to confess that ' in a lyrical poem of such 
limited compass, we find the whole universe, the heavens and 
the earth, sketched with a few bold touches? ' " 

If any are perplexed over seeming discrepancies between the 
teachings of science and the teachings of Genesis, let them re- 
member that almost innumerable scientific theories, regarded for 
a time as about to otherthrow the Bible, have, one after another, 
been abandoned. At the opening of the century the French 
Institute of Science counted, it is said, eighty theories " hostile 
to the Bible," of which theories every one has been abandoned 
by scientists. And so, while man's progress in knowledge — for 
he does progress — consists largely in casting aside theories that 
were but "science falsely so called," the Christian may with 
unshaken confidence rest in that record whose Author declares 
" Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass 
away." 

As relating to the adjustment between the Bible doctrine of 
creation, and the teachings of modern science, these words of 
Dr. A. A. Hodge (Commentary on the Confession) are judicious 
and comprehensive : " (1) The record in Genesis has been given 
by divine revelation, and therefore is infallibly true. (2) The 
book of nature and the book of revelation are both from God, 
and will be found, when both are adequately interpreted, to co- 
incide perfectly. (3) The facts upon which the science of geol- 
ogy is based are yet very imperfectly collected and much more 
imperfectly understood. The time has not come yet, in which a 
profitable comparison and adjustment of the two records can be 
effected. (4) The record in Genesis, brief and general as it is, 



208 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

was designed and is admirably adapted to lay the foundation of 
an intelligent faith in Jehovah as the absolute creator and the 
immediate former and ruler of all things. But it was not de- 
signed either to prevent or to take the place of a scientific in- 
terpretation of all existing phenomena, and of all traces of the 
past history of the world God allows men to discover. Appar- 
ent discrepancies in establishing truths can have their ground 
only in imperfect knowledge. God requires us both to believe 
and to learn. He imposes on us at present the necessity of hu- 
mility and patience." 

It is knowledge superficial and one-sided, as a rule, which 
prates of ''discrepancies" between God's word and his works. 
On this point the observation of Bacon has most pertinent appli- 
cation : " A little learning inclineth men's minds to skepticism ; 
but much learning bringeth them back again to religion." 

In the further analysis of the doctrine of the Confession we 
note: 

2. The content of the creation, namely, " the world and all 
things therein, whether visible or invisible." 

This statement implies that only God is uncaused and eternal, 
and that whatever is, besides him, owes its existence to the 
divine creative agency. If we hold the doctrine of the creation 
of any thing, in its substance and in its form as a creature, we 
will consistently hold the creation of all things. " By him were 
created all things which are in the heavens and which are upon 
the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or 
lordships, or governments or powers; all things were created 
through him and for him." — Col. i. 16. In this Pauline state- 
ment of the heirship of Christ to all things, because all were 
made through and for him, the " things visible " are thought to 
be the material fabric and all material objects therein, and the 
" things invisible" are thought to be the various orders of 
angels, further represented as principalities, powers, etc. While 
the sacred writer doubtless meant to ascribe to Christ the crea- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 209 

tion of all things, we are not to suppose his enumeration of 
things created was at all designed to be a complete inventory of 
the orders of being or of the elementary substances making up 
the universe. 

While some philosophers have held that mind is the sole 
entity, and others have held that matter is the sole entity, the 
majority of thinkers have held that mind and matter are dis- 
tinct entities, and that dualism is therefore the true theory of the 
universe. No necessary laws of thought require the acceptance 
of any one of these theories. If God has created substance, he 
may have created many species of substance. Why not? It 
may be that what we call matter exists in species, although all 
forms of it known to us possess some properties in common. 
We can not know substance. We know phenomena, and be- 
lieve there must be a substance, an entity that knows, and also a 
something that is known as existing and acting on the percip- 
ient being. Thus we arrive at a dualism embracing (1) that 
which is extended, called matter, and that which thinks, or mind. 
Some claim that we have knowledge of four species of non- 
material substance: (1) The eternal Creator, (2) the soul of man, 
(3) the brute mind, (4) the principle of vegetable life. Origen 
says that " God created two general natures — a visible, that is, a 
corporeal nature, and an invisible nature, which is incorporeal." 
According to Rosmini, an Italian philosopher, cosmology has 
for its scope the study of (1) pure spirits, (2) souls, (3) bodies. 
" Since the body is the proximate cause of our sensations," says 
Rosmini, " and these are facts which happen in us without our 
agency, while we are merely passive subjects, it follows of ne- 
cessity that we are not body. And since that which the word 
WE expresses is the feeling and thinking subject, therefore this 
subject is a substance entirely different from corporeal sub- 
tance." Through phenomena we know there is a something we 
call matter, and for a like reason we know there is a something 
which exhibits the experienced phenomena of thinking, feeling, 
14 



2IO DOCTRINES AND GKNIUS OF THE 

willing, which something we call mind. There is a material 
world, and there is a world of mind. The former exists for the 
latter. God is the creator of both. What matter is, what mind 
is, and how God caused either to be, are things that absolutely 
transcend our power to know. 

We must not, however, in referring all things visible and in- 
visible to the creative power of God as the efficient cause of 
their existence think of them as simultaneous products of a 
single creative act or "work," nor that they were all called into 
being, as was formerly thought, within the space of six literal 
days. Ivong had the earth existed as the abode of multitudi- 
nous life ere " dust was fashioned into man." Perhaps we may 
rightly believe, with some, that God is ever-creating, and all 
about us, though we have known it not; or with others, as 
Lotze, that " the will to create is an absolutely eternal predicate 
of God, and ought not to be used to designate a deed of his, so 
much as the absolute dependence of the world upon his will" 

3. That man was last created. — In the statement of Genesis on 
this point there is, as already remarked, a complete correspond- 
ence with a fact thoroughly and independently established by 
science — a correspondence it would be almost impossible for us 
to believe a mere coincidence ! When the abode, long in prep- 
aration, was ready for man, the divine creative agency intro- 
duced man to his abode ; and thus was consummated a purpose 
which worked ceaselessly through the geological transforma- 
tions preceding man's appearance. In man the long series, ever 
working to an end, finds a rational interpretation — a world fitted 
for the abode of one capable of knowing it, using it, enjoying it, 
and of seeing therein the glory of the wisdom, power, and good- 
ness of its and his Creator. 

Of man's creation the Confession states specifically : 

(a) He was created in God's image. There has been much 
dispute among theologians as to what is to be understood by the 
" image of God " as predicated of man in his original endow- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 211 

ment. The Westminster Confession uses language that seems 
to define the meaning to be, "with reasonable and immortal 
souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness," 
adding, "after his (God's) own image." 

The sacred record not only positively asserts, but reduplicates 
the astounding assertion : "So God created man in his own 
image ; in the image of God created he him." Wonderful kin- 
ship of nature is man's ! Made in the image of his Creator ! 
Endowed to know and to enjoy ; to plan and to be a worker to- 
gether with God; to discern good and evil; to be a subject of 
the vast moral empire of Jehovah, and an heir to the eternal 
blessedness of virtue ! "If we would see God's conception of 
man," says Joseph Parker, " we must look upon the face of 
his Son— him of whom he said, ' This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased.' .... Let us steadfastly gaze on 
Christ, marking the perfectness of his lineaments, the harmony 
of his attributes, the sublimity of his purpose, and then point- 
ing to him in his solitude of beauty and holiness, we may ex- 
claim, ' Behold the image of God.' " To restore to man that 
image, Christ came ; and if transformed by his power we shall 
in very truth " be like him," and " shall see him as he is." 

(b) " Male and female created he them." From a pair was the 
race to come, the world to be peopled. Of one blood God hath 
made all men, to dwell upon the face of the earth. Related thus 
in his bodily nature, by the wonderful law of sex, with the 
creatures about him, man's soul is endowed with capacity to 
rise immeasurably above the brute, in thought to wing its way 
to God and immortality. 

(c) Man was endued with intelligence, sensibility, and will. 
Intelligence, sensibility, and will are terms used to designate 

the soul's power to put forth three generically different kinds 
of phenomena. The soul thinks, feels, wills. Intelligence desig- 
nates the soul's power to think and to know; sensibility, its 
power to feel; will, its power of choosing, and putting forth 



212 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OP THE 

volitions. It is man, thus endowed, "the one indivisible, intel- 
ligent, self-conscious, free agent that thinks, and feels, and 
chooses, and acts from choice." 

Thus endowed, man is conscious of his mental states and 
activities, and conscious of their relation to himself as their 
source, and conscious of freedom in relation to the volitions he 
puts forth. Thus man is constituted a person, " a being," says 
Mark Hopkins, " who knows himself as the subject of phenom- 
ena, and so can say I." "This," adds the same writer, "no 
being below man can do. No animal can do it, nor the sun, nor 
the stars ; and the power to do it places man above them all. 
.... Finding such a being, we find, not an act, but its source." 
Thus does man's natural endowment render him necessarily a 
subject of moral law — that is, a being capable of experiencing 
good, of discerning like capacity in others, and the means of its 
attainment for himself and others, and of choosing, and acting 
from choice, with reference to this chief end. The infinitely 
wise Creator, being also infinitely good, endowed man with 
capability of good, wills that man shall seek and realize the 
good of which he is capable, and commands him so to do ; for 
he " willeth not the death of any." And so the moral law, as 
issuing from man's own nature, and as expressed in the re- 
vealed will of his Creator, is the law prescribing and command- 
ing that course of action which issues in man's own highest 
good, and the highest good of all other sentient creatures 
affected by his actions. 

(d) The law of God was written in man's heart. The passage 
cited by the Confession, in proof of this assertion, is Rom. ii. 
14, 15 : " For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by 
nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the 
law, are a law unto themselves : which show the work of the law 
written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, 
and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing 
one another." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 213 

Perhaps it has been justly observed " that there is scarcely in 
the whole New Testament any greater difficult}' than the ascer- 
taining the various meanings of vdfioq {law) in the Epistles of 
St. Paul," and the passage cited is one on which expositors 
differ widely. Perhaps the passage is rightly interpreted to 
mean that "the voice of conscience, which proceeds from a moral 
feeling of dislike or approbation, and the judgment of the 
mind, when it examines the nature of actions, unite in testify- 
ing that what the moral law of God requires, is impressed, in 
some good measure, even on the hearts of the heathen." Of 
Adam it may be said (1) that his Creator endowed him to be a 
subject of moral law, and, (2) that out of the nature thus be- 
stowed arose the law of his behavior. The law of God was 
thus written in his heart, in the very constitution of his mental 
being. In the absence of experience and of the knowledge 
that would come only by the study of his powers, it was all the 
more necessary that Adam should at once receive a revelation 
of the will of his Maker in the form of positive instruction and 
command. 

(e) Endowed with power to fulfill the law. A law they could 
not have fulfilled, could not have been to them a moral law. 
Man is accountable for what he hath. Our first parents had 
power to choose, and to act from choice, among the several 
ends within their knowledge, and discriminated by them as 
right or wrong. They had power to do the right, to turn away 
from the wrong, to obey the commands of God. Nothing 
within them, nothing from without, acting upon them, necessi- 
tated the disobedience that brought their and our woe ; for — 

(f) They were made upright and free from all bias to evil. 
This view of man's original endowment vindicates the ways 

of God as man's Creator and Lawgiver, and affords a rational 
explanation of the actual condition of the race. Sin is a fact. 
Freedom of will is an experienced fact. Neither by force of 
their constitution, nor by purpose of their God, secret or ex- 



214 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

pressed, nor by their environment were our foreparents neces- 
sitated to disobey. Of choices possible to them, they made a 
sinful choice ; and so sin entered the world, and death by sin. 

4. That the final cause, or purpose, of the creation is " the 
manifestation of the eternal power, wisdom, and goodness " of the 
Creator. 

If we regard the world as a product of creative wisdom and 
goodness, we of necessity believe that the world was created 
for an end, or purpose, good and wise. What we believe this 
end to be is, as Dr. Hodge observes, a question of the highest 
importance. " Since the chief end of every system of means 
and agencies must govern and give character to the whole sys- 
tem, so our view of the chief end of God in his works must 
give character to all our views as to his creative, providential, 
and gracious dispensation. Our Confession (Westminster) very 
explicitly takes the position that the chief end of God in his 
eternal purposes, and in their temporal execution in creation 
and providence is the manifestation of his own glory." 

''The Scriptures explicitly assert," Dr. Hodge continues, 
"that this is the chief end of God in creation," citing in proof 
Col. i. 16 and Prov. xvi. 4, neither of which texts, however, is 
conclusive proof of the doctrine in its Calvinistic sense. By 
other theologians it is maintained that " God proposed for him- 
self, as his ultimate end, the promotion of the happiness of his 
creatures." The two conceptions of the divine purpose in the 
creation, taken in their relation to theological systems, lead to 
widely different views of the attributes of God and of the nat- 
ure and design of the gospel provision of mercy. According to 
the former view, God's decrees have, likewise, his own glory as 
their end, and so his providence in the government of the 
world, and so the provision of salvation. If to this scheme of 
thought we add that God decrees whatsoever comes to pass, we 
land at once in the most rigid fatalism, and are hopelessly be- 
reft of all premises from which to predicate freedom of will, 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 215 

man's responsibility, the distinction between virtue and wicked- 
ness, and the impartial goodness of God. 

Surely if the mind of God is at all opened up to his creatures, 
it is in the gracious provision for man's salvation, and it is ex- 
plicitly declared that " God so loved the world that he gave his 
only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not 
perish, but have everlasting life." Could language more posi- 
tively or plainly assert that God's purpose in sending his Son is 
the promotion of the happiness of his rational creature man ? 
So, we must believe, God's purpose in creation was to bring 
about the happiness that would come through a universe of 
creatures rational and sentient. Goodness delights in happi- 
ness, and seeks to multiply it. A good ruler will desire and 
promote the happiness of his subjects, and the more he desires 
it and promotes it, the more will he glorify his own wisdom and 
goodness; but if he seeks the happiness of his subjects solely 
or chiefly to manifest his own glor}^, then does he not love good- 
ness and happiness, but is selfish and himself not good. In 
places and phrases almost numberless the Bible asserts the 
goodness of God, and that he delighteth not in the suffering or 
unhappiness of his creatures. It is Cumberland Presbyterian 
doctrine, that God loves all his rational creatures, made all to be 
happy, and provides a way for the redemption of all who had 
through sin forfeited happiness. This doctrine glorifies God as 
he is seen through his infinite goodness. Calvinism glorifies his 
infinite sovereignty. 

According to the Calvinistic system, "whatsoever comes to 
pass " is not only as God decreed it, but he decreed it to be as it 
is, solely to promote his own glory ; and that this divine pur- 
pose holds every thing in absolute bondage to an omnipotent de- 
cree reaching from the inception of creation to man's changeless 
state in heaven or hell. Such a theological system is not char- 
acterized unjustly in the following words of Rev. John Miller, of 
Princeton, New Jersey, in his commentary on Romans ix. 14, 15 : 



2l6 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

" The sovereignty of God, which even infidels are inclining to 
under the modern naturalism, has been frightfully marred by 
two additions, which men otherwise good have rashly made to 
it. One is, that God is sovereign over the actions of my mind, 
which he undoubtedly must be to be any God at all, and shapes 
the choices of his sovereignty for the display of his perfections ; 
a gospel that is simply horrible. Hell must measure its depth 
of mischief. Atheists have attacked it with zeal, and then pre- 
tended the}'' were attacking Christianity. We are indeed taught 
that God does every thing for display (Psalm viii. i ; xxix. 9), 
but always as a gracious instrument. We are taught that this 
display is vital for our Good (Psalm lxiii. 2). We are taught, 
therefore, that it is an intermediate end. But that God damns a 
creature for display, and that such is his final, and therefore 
only and in itself all-sufficient and absolutely positive and nec- 
essary end, must sink any conceivable S}^stem. And sadly 
enough, the same men who teach this wickedness, teach another 
— namely, that this self-adulating conduct of the universe is 
sovereign in the sense of naked, stark, and absolute pleasure of 
the governing will." To view the creation as prompted by the 
display-motive, and such display as having no basis but the 
mere-good-pleasure of the Creator, is to overlook the righteous- 
ness of God revealed in the creation and the gospel, and, as the 
author last quoted remarks, " really to throw away the beauty 
that converts, and to put in its place a horror which repels the 
perishing." 

It is the writer's clear conviction that the great majority of 
theologians in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church heartily 
agree in rejecting the Calvinistic interpretation of the words in 
which our book expresses the final end of God in the creation. 
We concur in the sentiment of the Rev. John Miller, that 
" God's chief end, therefore, in creation and providence, is his 
own infinite holiness " (not the display of holiness), and that 
"holiness demands the highest results of benevolence, and the 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 217 

highest diffusion of holiness, all over the world that he shall 
have brought into being." 

After all, the parties to this controversy as to what is the 
chief end, or final cause, in creation, providence and grace, may 
not differ so widely, when once all are fully understood. We 
can quite agree with Dr. Hodge that " the highest attainment of 
this supreme end" — the manifestation of God's own glory — 
" carries with it the largest possible measure of good to the 
creature." 

We hold, however, that God creates, and governs, and saves, 
to promote happiness in the universe he creates; and thereby 
all the glory accrues to God : while the Calvinistic system 
teaches that God creates, and governs, and saves some and 
passes by others, to manifest his own glory ; and that " the 
largest possible measure of good to the creature," as Dr. Hodge 
puts it, accrues only because that is the best way of displaying 
the glory, and not as an end in either creation or salvation. 

But to show how an eternal unconditional decree to " pass 
by" some of the human race, reprobating them, and carrying 
them inevitably to destruction, can " carry with it " what Dr. 
Hodge calls " the largest possible measure of good to the 
creature" (to these creatures, at least), is an undertaking which 
no system of theology or metaphysics has yet achieved. 

If, however, in accordance with what is called the law of the 
conditioning and the conditioned, we look upon the inanimate 
creation as existing for the display of the sentient life of which 
it is a grand theater ; and the inanimate and the lower orders of 
animated nature alike as existing for man ; and man as endowed 
with intelligence, sensibility, will, and a moral nature in view of 
happiness as the chief end of his creation, and the happiness 
which arises from the practice of virtue as the crowning and 
supreme good for which he was made, then are we prepared to 
see in the creation, and to the fullest extent, the manifestation 
of the power, wisdom, and goodness of God; and thus are we 



2l8 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

enabled to give a rational explanation of the last point in our 
analysis, namely: 

5. That the creation is all very good. 

That which is good is good for something, or because it serves 
some valuable end. The well-being of a sentient creature, or 
its happiness, is intrinsically good; and the happiness which 
accrues to a moral being from the practice of virtue is the 
crowning intrinsic good. Whatever promotes intrinsic good is 
a relative good. In view of the end for which man was made, 
the world in which he lives is very good. In man it finds its 
explanation. Alike in body and mind man himself displays the 
workmanship of a Creator infinitely wise, infinitely good. As 
ministering to his wants, the world in which he lives manifests 
the same wisdom and goodness. Without man as an end 
toward which all the lower stages of the creation worked, and 
for which they existed or now exist, the world can not be called 
" good " in any rational or moral sense. In view of their minis- 
tration to man's well-being the iron in the mountains, the mar- 
ble in the quarry, the vast magazines of coal stored up thou- 
sands of ages ago are all very good. This earth its Maker has 
given to man. Man's physical organization brings him into 
relation to his material abode, enabling him to know, to use, to 
enjoy it. His spiritual nature allies him to God, and makes him 
the favored one of all earth's creatures, for whose weal " Heaven 
husbands all events." For man, air, water, light and heat, fruit 
on the boughs of the trees, fields of grain ripened by summer 
suns, and ten thousand other things are "good; " and it is be- 
cause man is made in the image of God that he can be a worker- 
together-with-God, planting, sowing, improving nature's prod- 
ucts, opening up its vast store-houses of mineral treasures, 
spanning continents with iron rails and traversing all seas with 
ships, in order to gratify his desires and promote his well-being. 
Marvelous indeed, it seems to us, is it that any one with intelli- 
gence can look upon this creation crowded with adaptations, 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 219 

and fail to see that it is full of mind, full of good, full of 
God. 

If now we remember that man has sinned, and so has brought 
evil upon himself; that in consequence of this moral defection 
we " see through a glass darkly" in our efforts to understand 
the creation of God ; that this present state is a state of proba- 
tion and discipline, and that a great scheme of redemptive 
regeneration, running through the age. is to issue in a restora- 
tion typified by " new heavens and a new earth " with purified 
and glorified man subject to his glorified Redeemer and King. 
we behold, even in this humble province of God's vast empire, a 
creation truly good, over which morning stars may sing to- 
gether and the sons of God shout for joy. 

Creation, no less than redemption, proclaims the dignity* and 

worth of man: " Thou madest him but a little lower than the 

angels. Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou 

hast made him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. 

Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet." Only 

man was made in the imasre of God. " Xothins: on earth is 

great," said a philosopher, <; but man; and in man, nothing is 

great but the soul." 

" Knowest thou the worth of a soul immortal? 
Behold the midnight glory ! worlds on worlds ! 
Amazing pomp ! Redouble this amaze ; 
Ten thousand add; add twice ten thousand more : 
Then weigh the whole : oxe soul outweighs them all. 
And calls the astonishing magnificence 
Of unintelligent creation, poor." 



220 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



CHAPTER VII. 

PROVIDENCE. 

" God the Creator upholds and governs all creatures and things by his 
most wise and holy providence. 

" God, in his providence, ordinarily works through the instrumentality 
of laws or means, yet is free to work with and above them, at his pleasure. 

" God never leaves nor forsakes his people ; yet when they fall into sin 
he chastises them in various ways, and makes even their own sin the occa- 
sion of discovering unto them their weakness and their need of greater 
watchfulness and dependence upon him for supporting grace. 

" God's providence over the wicked is not designed to lead them to de- 
struction, but to a knowledge of his goodness and of his sovereign power 
over them, and thus to become a means of their repentance and reforma- 
tion, or to be a warning to others ; and if the wicked make it an occasion, 
of hardening their hearts, it is because of their perversity, and not from 
necessity. 

"While the providence of God, in general, embraces all creatures, it 
does, in a special manner, extend to his church." — Confession of Faith. 

" What are God's works of providence ? 

" God's works of providence are his preserving and so governing his 
creatures, and overruling their actions, as to manifest his wisdom, power, 
and goodness in promoting their welfare." — Catechism. 

T)ERHAPS no other idea so generally and thoroughly per- 
vades man's thinking as that of a power above himself by 
which, in some manner, and to some extent, he is affected as to 
his surroundings, his conduct, and his destiny. This sentiment 
is common to the peasant and the philosopher. History and 
poetry and literature are full of it. Everywhere and in all time 
it has threaded the creeds, the instructions, the worship of the 
wisest and best. Our hymns and prayers and sermons are full 
of it, and our ordinary conversation and friendly greetings and 
farewells bear testimony to its remarkable hold upon the mind 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 221 

and heart of the masses. If, from his own finite and dependent 
nature, the contingent and transitory world in which he lives, 
and the persistent tendency of the progress of human affairs 
toward ends rational and moral, man's reason necessarily asserts 
a Supreme Intelligence as a cause of the universe, in like man- 
ner does man's reason assert that this harmonious progress of 
the universe depends on guiding and governing intelligence and 
power out of and above himself. And this is the substance of 
the doctrine of providence. 

If now we propose an inquiry into the extent and the means 
of God's providential guidance and government of the world, we 
shall find an almost endless diversity of view. It is doubtful, 
indeed, whether any theologian of to-day can formulate a half a 
score of propositions defining the doctrine of providence, which 
any half score of theologians would unqualifiedly indorse. Nor 
should we wonder or be troubled on that account, for its very 
nature is such that the subject must transcend the limits of 
human knowledge and human reason. No doctrine is taught 
more certainly, however, in the sacred Scriptures, nor by a 
greater number of passages, than that of God's providential care 
and guidance of the world, and especially of his people, as wit- 
ness the following texts : 

"The eyes of all wait upon thee, and thou givest them their 
meat in due season." Ps. cxlv. 15. 

" His kingdom ruleth over all." Ps. ciii. 19. 

" But if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, 
and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more 
clothe you, O ye of little faith?" Matt. vi. 30. 

"These wait all upon thee, that thou mayest give them their 
meat in due season. 

'That thou givest them they gather; thou openest thine 
hand, they are filled with good. 

"Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away 
their breath, they die, and return to their dust. 



222 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

"Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and thou 
renewest the face of the earth." Ps. civ. 27-30. 

"Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion 
endureth throughout all generations. 

"The I^ord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those 
that be bowed down. 

" Thou openest thine hand and satisfiest the desire of every 
living thing." Ps. cxlv. 13-16. 

"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of 
them shall fall on the ground without your Father. 

"But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 

" Fear ye not, therefore ; ye are of more value than many 
sparrows." Matt. x. 29-31. 

An orthodox theological writer, citing numerous passages as 
authority for his views, thus summarizes what he regards the 
teaching of the Bible on the subject of providence : " (a) The 
preservation of the existence of all things depends on God alone. 
(b) God is the ruler and proprietor of the universe, his title in 
it being founded on his having created it. (c) The state and 
circumstance of all created things are determined by God ; he 
needs nothing, but his creatures receive from him the supply of 
all their wants, (d) Nothing is so insignificant as to be un- 
worthy of his notice ; his providence extends even to the 
smallest object, (e) Through his watchful care all his creatures, 
in their several kinds, enjoy as much good as from their nature 
they are susceptible of. (/) But his providence is most con- 
spicuous in reference to the human race, both as a whole and as 
composed of individual men. He preserves their lives, provides 
them with food, clothing, and every thing which they need. 
Their actions and their destinies are under his guidance and at 
his disposal ; and their race is preserved from generation to gen- 
eration through his care. The whole is comprised in the words 
of Paul, Acts xvii. 28, ' In him we live, and move, and have our 
being.' " 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 223 

The foregoing scheme, while stating in a general way the main 
drift of the popular idea as to the relation of the divine provi- 
dence to the world, is not wholly free from objectionable state- 
ments. The author of it, speaking of the practical uses of 
these representations, says that " they furnish us with the means 
of forming just notions of God, and with motives to induce us to 
reverence and serve him. . . . Indeed, the wnole object and ten- 
dency of this doctrine, as exhibited in the sacred writings, is to 
excite and cherish pious dispositions in our minds. It leads us 
to think with every passing event that God knows it ; to feel 
that it is exactly as he willed, and in it to see his agency." Now, 
that God knows every event, the Scriptures plainly teach ; but 
that every event is " exactly as he willed" is what many do not 
believe, and what, in the judgment of many, the Scriptures no- 
where teach. When the writer quoted goes on to say that if we 
were duly affected by the doctrine of providence "our constant 
maxim would be nothing without God'' he is guilty of sheer 
inconsistency, for the assertion implies that we do many things 
without God, whereas he had just asserted that every event is 
just as God willed it. Such contradictions defy all logical juxta- 
position of moral ideas, and subject the whole doctrine of provi- 
dence to doubt in the minds of those who think coherently, but 
have not for themselves studied thoroughly what the Scriptures 
teach. 

In its relation to providence, as in its relation to grace, 
the Calvinistic unconditional decree of absolute divine predeter- 
mination of whatsoever comes to pass, must forever and hope- 
lessly embarrass any and every rational idea of a moral govern- 
ment of the world. Materialistic fatality no more certainly 
annihilates the possibility of moral agency, responsibility, and 
the distinction of actions as virtuous or sinful, than does this 
vicious theological fatality which Augustine imported from hea- 
then philosophy. If to the declaration that every event occurs 
just as God had willed it we add the comment of an accepted 



224 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

expositor of the Westminster Confession, that " God not only 
efficaciously concurs in producing the action, as to the matter of 
it, but likewise predetermines the creature to such or such 
an action, and not to another, shutting up all other ways of 
acting, and leaving that only open which he had determined to 
be done;" and that "God not only preserves and supports the 
faculties with which a man sins, but likewise previously, imme- 
diately, and efficaciously concurs to the substance, matter, or 
entity of the action; " and that " the sole reason why any thing 
comes to pass is because God has decreed it," we have a scheme 
of providence fatalistic to the extreme of divesting the infinite 
Jehovah of all moral attributes as a governor of a universe, and 
leaving him without any moral universe to govern. And since, 
according to this scheme of providence, no event could fall out 
otherwise than as it does, it is apparent that it can be of no pos- 
sible concern to man whether the necessity which determines 
his thoughts, behavior, and destiny lie in an eternal, uncondi- 
tional decree of God, or in a "material necessity of all things 
without a Deity," according to which latter view, as the materi- 
alistic philosophy now puts it, our thoughts and feelings were in 
the fire-mist millions of years ago, out of which they have been 
evolved by the operation of blind cosmic forces. We turn with 
disgust from the vices ascribed by Greek and Roman mytholo- 
gies to their long list of 

" Gods, partial, changeful, and unjust, 
Whose attributes are rage, revenge and lust," 

but by this false scheme of providence we charge the Christian's 
God, the God we adore, with direct agency in all the vices and 
crimes of men. 

The rejection of that scheme of providence which in its rela- 
tion to man is fatalistic, is not the rejection of the doctrine of 
providence. The fact that God created the world justifies the 
assumption that he governs the world. There is abundant 
proof that both creation and providence look to ends rational 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 225 

and good, and from these ends, as seen in the works and provi- 
dence of God, we infer his wisdom and goodness. We believe 
that the world exhibits a Creator who formed the creature man 
to be a rational and moral agent, who endowed him with the 
power of freedom of action in view of ends in themselves 
worthy, and thus to be a subject of moral law, and that the 
providence of God respecting man has made man's history, as it 
has unfolded through the sweep of centuries, an "increasing 
expression and illustration and demonstration of a moral pur- 
pose." Equally manifest is it that a unity of purpose, ever ex- 
panding and rising, holds through all the lower stages of crea- 
tion up to man, and that one great moral purpose is now carry- 
ing humanity through a moral progress to a possible goal whose 
glories and grandeur are yet but dimly foreshadowed. On this 
ground most of all it is that the idea of a Creator and Ruler of 
the universe most powerfully appeals to man's reason and his 
.sense of need. It is undeniable, also, that Christian belief in 
the existence of God, and in his providence over the world is 
the most potent of all causes operating to direct, sustain, and 
augment the grand progress along the line of ethical transfor- 
mation into the spiritual and the heavenly. That faith gone, a 
thousand good influences sustained by it must likewise go, and 
man again relapses to the lower plane of the carnal, doomed to 
a fruitless search among the beggarly elements for that which is 
truly good and satisfying. 

In this grand moral transformation, generated and sustained 
and directed and prophesied by Christian faith in the provi- 
dence of God, the Christian religion manifests a most wonder- 
ful contrast to all other systems of religion or philosophy 
known to the world ; and this contrast finds its highest expres- 
sion and significance when we take into account the mighty 
transformation of humanity, past, present, and prospective, 
through the redemptive agency peculiar to Christianity. If one 
will impartially and sufficiently reflect upon that PROGRESS 
15 



226 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

through the centuries, which began with the call of Abraham, 
and has reached our day, with millions of subjects — that for 
ages in a remarkable manner kept a people separate from all 
other nations — that in the fullness of time utterly abrogated a 
great typical system burdened with rites and ceremonies, to 
usher in and establish one never to be shaken— that is to-day 
sustained by agencies and potencies vastly superior to what it 
ever knew in the past, he will assuredly conclude that such a 
progress can no more be accounted for without a moral cause 
above and back of it all than that, without' a cause, the great 
Mississippi, dividing our continent by its majestic stretch, flows 
continually southward, ever widening until it pours its silver 
flood into the Gulf. As Christianity is a fact, divine providence 
must be a fact. "Here," says Dr. Hitchcock, "we find a key of 
the history of other ages and nations — a thread that will lead us 
out of every labyrinth of the present and the future. Toward 
Calvary, for thousands of years, all the lines of history con- 
verged. And now for other thousands of } r ears, to the end of 
time, from Calvary will the lines diverge, till ' the kingdoms of 
this world have become the kingdoms of our L,ord, and he shall 
reign for ever and ever.' " 

Turning to a volume of the sermons of a minister of the Prot- 
estant Episcopal Church who, more than half a century ago, 
was of the class called powerful preachers, we read : "There is in 
all of us, perhaps, a tendency to the substituting second causes 
for the first, to the so dwelling on the laws of matter, and the 
operations of nature, as to forget, if not den}^ the continued 
agency of God. If our creed were to be gathered from our 
common forms of speech it might be concluded that we re- 
garded nature as some agent quite distinct from Deity, having 
its own sphere, and its own powers, in and with which to work. 
We are wont to draw a line between what we call natural and 
what supernatural ; assigning the latter to an infinite power, but 
ascribing the former to ordinary causes, unconnected with the 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 227 

immediate interference of God. . . . We do not indeed suppose 
that God exerts any such agency as to supersede the laws or 
nullify the properties of matter ; but we believe that he is con- 
tinually acting by and through these laws and properties, as his 
instruments, and not that these laws and properties are them- 
selves effecting the various occurrences in the material world. 
What is that nature of which we rashly speak but the Almighty 
perpetually at work ? What are those laws of matter, to which 
we confidently appeal, and by which we explain certain phenom- 
ena, but so many manifestations of infinite power and intelli- 
gence?" And so, he proceeds, "I reckon that the hand of the 
Almighty perpetually guides our planet, and that it is through 
his energies, momentarily applied, the ponderous mass effects its 
rotations" — that " Deity is busy with every seed that is cast into 
the ground, and that it is through his immediate agency that 
every leaf opens, and every flower blooms, . . . that pulse suc- 
ceeds to pulse and breath follows breath." 

According to views expressed in the last cited paragraph, the 
forces of nature are but the divine energy manifesting itself in 
the physical world, and the laws of nature but the modes and 
limitations under which that divine energy therein manifests 
itself. In the sense in which any thing is providential, all 
things are, and there is no justification for the distinction of 
some events as being natural, and others supernatural; for all 
are supernatural, as products of a power transcending every 
thing inherent in matter. 

From the view which regards the forces operating in nature, 
to bring about its varied phenomena, as the immediate operation 
of the will of God, whether propelling a planet or unfolding a 
flower, it is but a step to the doctrine, held by Melanchthon and 
others of his day, and not wanting in current theology, that 
providence, so far as it relates to the preservation of the world, 
is a continual creation; since, as it is alleged, if the divine sup- 
port were for a moment withdrawn, the world would revert to 



228 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

nothing, or cease to exist. It is certainly not a long step from 
such a theory of providence to the "all-God," a kosmic philos- 
ophy of Spinoza, according to which there is no universe but 
God, no God but the universe ; which asserts that " God alone is 
mover and worker of all things ; all creatures do their work not 
actively, but passively. The creature acts not, but is acted on ; 
as God works through each, so it works; the creature only 
holds still, and is passive to God. . . . For the bird really does 
not sing and fly, but is besung and borne up into the air ; it is 
God that lives, sings, moves, and flies in the bird. He is the 
essence of all essences, so that all creatures are full of him, 
and do and are nothing but what God tells and wills." And 
this is the idea of divine immanence carried to its extremest 
limit, the identification of God and nature, the resolution of all 
phenomena into immediate and direct exertion of. the divine 
energy. 

"And nature, what is it," said Zwingle, " but God's unceasing 
and perpetual working and disposing of all things?" And so 
Melanchthon : " Human infirmity, although it thinks God to be 
a Creator, yet it imagines that afterward, as a builder goes away 
from the ship he has constructed, and commits it to the sailors, 
so God goes away from his work, and leaves his creatures to 
self-guidance. In opposition to these errors, our minds should 
be steadfast in the true idea of the creation, namely, that not 
only were things made by God, but also that the substances of 
things are by God perpetually kept and sustained. God is pres- 
ent to his creature, not as the God of the Stoics is present, but 
as acting most freely, sustaining the creature, and guiding it in 
his boundless compassion, bestowing gifts, furthering or re- 
straining secondary causes." Like sentiments were held by 
many of the fathers of the Greek Church, notably by Origen, 
Athanasius, and Clement of Alexandria, who, as Mr. Fiske in 
his Idea of God asserts, "regarded Deity as immanent in the 
universe, and eternally operating through natural laws." "In 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 229 

their view," Mr. Fiske adds, " God is not a localizable per- 
sonality, remote from the world, and acting upon it only by 
means of occasional portent and prodigy ; nor is the world a life- 
less machine blindly working after some preordained method, 
and only feeling the presence of God in so far as he now and 
then sees fit to interfere with its normal course of procedure. 
On the contrary, God is the ever present life of the world ; it is 
through him that all things exist from moment to moment, and 
the natural sequence of events is a perpetual revelation of the 
divine wisdom and goodness." As shown by Professor Allen in 
his Continuity of Christian Thought, Athanasius pushed his 
views much beyond those of Clement and Origen, viewing the 
universe through the scriptural idea of a divine Trinity, the 
eternal Son as revealing the Father immanent in nature, while 
through the Holy Spirit is revealed the spiritual and ethical 
character of the manifested Deity, in contradistinction to the 
idea of the pantheistic confusion of God with his works, and as 
revealing himself in humanity, in the highest form, " only in so 
far as humanity recognized its calling, and through the Spirit 
entered into communion with the Father and the Son." 

It is claimed, moreover, by those who interpret the doctrine 
of providence in accordance with such a theory of God's imma- 
nence in the universe as " binds the creation to God in the 
closest organic relationship," that the popular idea of "physical 
forces " as inherent in matter and controlling its phenomena is a 
substitution for " the direct action of the Deity," of that which 
does not exist and, in the nature of the case, can not exist. 
Thus, speaking of gravitation, which is imagined only, as he 
alleges, to be a kind of "pull," Professor Fiske says: "It ex- 
plains that in the presence of each other two bodies are 
observed to change their positions in a certain specified way, 
and this is all that it means. This is all that a strictly scientific 
hypothesis can possibly allege, and this is all that observation 
can possibly prove. . . . An atheistic metaphysics may imagine 



230 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

such a 'pull,' and may interpret it as the action of something 
that is not Deity, but such a conclusion can find no support in 
the scientific theorem, which is simply a generalized description 
of phenomena. . . . And what is thus obvious in this simple, 
astronomical example is equally true in principle in every case 
whatever, in which one set of phenomena is interpreted by an- 
other set." 

And still further, it is urged that in the doctrine of evolution 
as a mode of creation is to be found the strongest of all proofs 
of an immanent God as the working force in nature. After ref- 
erence to the fact that Leibnitz rejected Newton's theory of 
gravitation on the ground that it seemed to him to substitute 
material forces for the power of Deity, Professor Fiske goes on 
to say: "The theological objection urged by Leibnitz against 
Newton was repeated word for word by Agassiz in his comments 
upon Darwin. He regarded it as a fatal objection to the Dar- 
winian theory that it appeared to substitute the action of phys- 
ical forces for the creative action of Deity. The fallacy here is 
precisely the same as in Leibnitz's argument. Mr. Darwin has 
convinced us that the existence of highly complicated organ- 
isms is the result of an infinitely diversified aggregate of cir- 
cumstances so minute as severally to seem trivial or accidental ; 
yet the consistent theist will always occupy an impregnable 
position in maintaining that the eyitire series in each and every 
one of its incidents is an immediate manifestation of the creative act 
of God." 

To some of our readers it will doubtless seem that we have 
dwelt too long in this attempt to explain theories quite remote 
from the ordinary conception of the doctrine of divine provi- 
dence. These, however, are questions of profound interest to 
those willing to reflect upon this subject of greatest possible 
concern to man. It will be remembered that the sacred writers, 
as a rule, refer all physical phenomena immediately to the divine 
agency, according to whom God sends the rain, causes the sun 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 23 I 

to shine, clothes the fields with pastures; stars and constella- 
tions of stars perform their revolutions through his immediate 
agency, and he opens his hand to satisfy the needs of all living 
things. This absence of reference to "secondary causes" has 
been attributed to their ignorance of such causes— and they cer- 
tainly were in a large measure ignorant of secondary causes as 
modern science conceives them — but now it turns out that many 
of the profoundest thinkers of to-day, including not a few scien- 
tists, tell us that between the phenomena about us, and the 
''direct action of Deity," they can find nothing that corresponds 
to the ordinary conception of an efficient secondary cause. If 
this theory be correct, the Bible receives amazing confirmation 
in the fact that while it gives to the world a system of ethical 
teaching incomparably superior to that derived from any other 
source, its writers, who make no claims to scientific knowl- 
edge, and have been supposed to have had little or none, yet 
spoke in complete accord with a theory now gaining wide accept- 
ance as a rational explanation of the universe. The doctrine 
of the existence of God. of creation, of providence, receives pro- 
found significance and illustration in the most advanced scien- 
tific disclosures of to-day. 

But quite a different theory of the nature of the universe and 
of the Creator's relation to the universe claims our attention, as 
furnishing a basis for a different interpretation of the doctrine 
of providence, and, on the part of some, to a total denial of the 
doctrine. This theory asserts that the Creator endowed his cre- 
ation with such attributes that it is not only self-sustained, but 
that all its phenomena come about through the operation of the 
secondary causes now operative in the universe, and inherent in 
it as impressed by the Creator. It tells us, in fact, in its most 
mechanical aspect, that for the last million of years all things — 
miracles aside, if such things ever occurred — the course of nat- 
ure would have been precisely what it has been, had the Creator 
been asleep. It will be seen that this is complete opposition to 



232 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

the theory that makes the continuance of the universe a con- 
tinual creation, and all its phenomena dependent on the imme- 
diate agency of an immanent Creator. To such a structure of 
the universe the atheist indeed holds, but admits no cause out- 
side of eternally existent matter and its inherent potencies. 
Deism admits the creation of the world, but denies a conserving 
and governing providence. Christian theists admit the uniform 
operation of natural causes, some affirming that only through 
these God exercises his providence over the world, while others 
believe that some events come about through a suspension of 
the operation of natural causes, and by the immediate interposi- 
tion of divine agency. 

Such, it is claimed, is the conception of the universe, as- 
shown in a preceding chapter, which the genius of Augustine 
fastened upon the Western world, in opposition to the teachings 
of the Greek fathers — Clement, his pupil Origen, and Athana- 
sius. "Obviously," says Prof. Fiske, "if Leibnitz and Agassiz 
had been educated in that higher theism phased by Clement and 
Athanasius in ancient times, if they had been accustomed ta 
think of God as immanent in the universe and eternally cre- 
ative, .... to conceive of * physical forces ' as powers of which 
the action could in anywise be 'substituted' for the action of 
Deity would in such case have been absolutely impossible. The 
higher, or Athanasian, theism knows nothing of secondary 
causes in a world where every event flows directly from the 
eternal First Cause. It knows nothing of physical forces save 
as immediate manifestations of the omnipresent creative power 
of God. In the personification of physical forces, and the 
implied contrast between their action and that of Deity, there is: 
something very like the survival of the habits of thought which 
characterized ancient polytheism." 

The reader, anxious to come at the truth, will thank us for the 
following additional citation from Prof. Fiske, as further illus- 
trating the widely different conceptions of the universe, and the 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 233 

not less widely different views of divine providence to which they 
severally lead: "The subject is of such immense importance 
that I must illustrate it from yet another point of view. We 
must observe the manner in which, along with the progress of 
scientific discovery, theological arguments have come to be per- 
meated by the strange assumption that the greater part of the 
universe is godless. Here again we must go back for a moment 
to the primeval world and observe how behind every physical 
phenomenon there were supposed to be quasi-human passion 

and quasi-human will After many ages of culture, men 

ceased to regard the familiar and regularly recurring phenomena 
of nature as immediate results of volition, and reserved this 
primeval explanation for unusual or terrible phenomena, such 
as comets and eclipses, or famines and plagues. As the result 
of these habits of thought, in course of time, Nature seemed to 
be divided into two antithetical provinces. On the one hand, 
there were the phenonena that occurred with a simple regularity 
which seemed to exclude the idea of capricious volition; and 
these were supposed to constitute the realm of natural law. On 
the other hand, there were the complex and irregular phenom- 
ena in which the presence of law could not be so easily detected, 
and these were supposed to constitute the realm of immediate, 
divine action. This antithesis has forever haunted the minds of 
men imbued with the lower, or Augustinian, theism ; and such 
have made up the larger part of the Christian world. It has 
tended to make the theologians hostile to science, and the men 
of science hostile to theology. For as scientific generalization 
has steadily extended the region of natural law, the region 
which theology has assigned to divine action has steadily dimin- 
ished Still, as of old, the ordinary theologian rests his 

case upon the assumption of disorder, caprice, and miraculous 
interference with the course of nature. A desperate fight it has 
been for some centuries, in which science has won ever}*- dis- 
puted position, while theology, untaught by perennial defeat, 



J234 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

still valiantly defends the little corner that is left it It is 

not science that is responsible for the mischievous distinction 
between divine action and natural law. That distinction is his- 
torically derived from a loose habit of philosophizing character- 
istic of ignorant ages, and was bequeathed to modern times by 
the theology of the Iyatin Church. Small blame to the atheist 
who, starting upon such a basis, thinks he can interpret the uni- 
verse without the idea of God ! He is but doing the best he 
knows how, with the materials given him. One has, however, 
but to adopt the higher theism of Clement and Athanasius, and 
this alleged antagonism between science and theology, by which 
so many hearts have been saddened, so many minds darkened, 
vanishes at once and forever. ' Once really adopt the conception 
of an ever-present God, without whom not a sparrow falls to the 
ground, and it becomes self-evident that the law of gravitation 
is but an expression of a particular mode of divine action. 
And what is thus true of one law is true of all laws.' The 
thinker in whose mind divine action is thus identified with 
orderly action .... foresees in every possible extension of 
knowledge a fresh confirmation of his faith in God ; . . . . and 
each act of scientific explanation but reveals an opening 
through which shines the glory of the Eternal Majesty." 

These are important ideas expressed in Prof. Fiske's clear and 
energetic style ; but he seems to us to carry his theory much 
beyond the teaching of the Greek fathers he esteems orthodox, 
and to be more nearly at one with Goethe and Spinoza. Origen 
expressly declares that when we say "the providence of God 
regulates all things," we utter a great truth if we attribute to 
that providence nothing but what is just and right. But if we 
ascribe to the providence of God all things whatsoever, however 
unjust they may be, the7i it is no longer true that the providence 
of God regulates all things, unless we refer directly to God's 
providence things which flow as results from his arrangements. 
And this he said in refutation of Celsus, who had asserted that 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 235 

"since every event falls out (as Prof. Fiske teaches) by the agency 
of God, and demons and heroes were therefore but powerful 
agents doing the commands of the Most High, it is right to wor- 
ship those heroes and demons." 

The discussion of the subject has brought us to a point where 
it is not unsuitable to state formally three theories of the uni- 
verse which render it utterly and hopelessly fatalistic : 

1 . The atheistic theory, which teaches that the sole substance 
of the universe is matter, and that all phenomena, including our 
sensations, thoughts, feelings, and volitions, as well as the fall 
of a rain drop or the revolution of a planet, are but an endless 
series of combinations and movements transpiring by the opera- 
tion of blind, unconscious forces inherent in matter. 

2. The theory which refers every event, including our 
thoughts and volitions, as does Prof. Fiske, to the direct and 
immediate agency of God as their efficient cause. 

3. The theory which makes the universe indeed a product of 
creative power, but so constituted and endowed that every event 
falls out through the operation of forces divinely impressed 
upon its several substances, while every event falls out also nec- 
essarily, and necessarily just as it is, because of an eternal, 
divine decree determining whatsoever comes to pass. 

Among the advocates of the third scheme is to be found Dr. 
McCosh, a leading theologian and philosopher in current discus- 
sions of religious problems, who says : 

"As entertaining this view of the perfection of the original 
constitution of all things, we see no advantage in callingin spe- 
cial interpositions of God acting without prrysical causes— always 
excepting the miracles employed to attest divine revelation. 
Speaking of the ordinary providences of God, we believe that 
the fitting of the various parts of the machinery is so nice that 
there is no need of any interference with it. We believe in an 
original disposition of all things ; we believe that in this dispo- 
sition there is provided an interposition of one thing in refer- 



236 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

ence to another, so as to produce the individual effects which 
God contemplates ; but we are not required by philosophy nor 
religion to acknowledge that there is subsequent interposition 
by God with the original dispositions and interpositions which 
he has substituted. ' This is, in fact, the great miracle of pror- 
idence, that no miracles are needed to accomplish its pur- 
poses.' " 

This passage Dr. McCosh follows with a quotation from Leib- 
nitz, who says : 

" God has provided every thing, he has remedied every thing 
beforehand. There is in his works a harmony, a beauty, already 
pre-established. This opinion does not at all exclude the provi- 
dence or the government of God. A true providence on the 
part of God demands a perfect foreknowledge ; but it demands 
not only that he has foreseen every thing, but also that he has 
provided for every thing — otherwise he is deficient either of the 
wisdom to foresee or the power to provide." 

"We see no advantage," says Dr. McCosh, "to be gained to 
religion by insisting that the ordinary events in the common 
providence of God can have no second cause," following his 
statement with this passage from Bacon : 

" For certain it is that God worketh nothing in nature but by 
second causes ; and if they would have it otherwise believed, it 
is mere imposture, as it were, in favor toward God, and nothing 
else but to offer to the Author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a 
lie. But farther, it is an assured truth that a little or superficial 
knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind to atheism, but 
a farther proceeding therein doth bring the mind back to relig- 
ion ; for in the entrance of philosophy when the second causes 
which are next unto the senses do offer themselves to the mind 
of man, if it dwell and stay there, it may induce some oblivion 
of the highest cause ; but when a man passeth on farther, and 
seeth the dependence of causes and the works of providence, 
then, according to the allegory of the poets, he will easily 



CUMBERLAND PEESBYTBRIAN CHURCH. 237 

believe that the highest link of nature's chain must needs be 
tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair." 

But, so far as relates to the quoted paragraphs, neither Bacon 
nor Leibnitz nor McCosh gives us any information as to how- 
God guides and governs the world through the uniform opera- 
tion of invariable secondary causes, in any sense corresponding 
to the popular Christian doctrine of providence. The " original 
disposition of all things," of which Dr. McCosh speaks, to be 
realized in the unfolding of earth's history solely by the opera- 
tion of natural causes — the miracles in attestation of divine 
inspiration excepted — is the same predetermination of all things 
asserted in the theological dogma, that " God from all eternity 
did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely 
and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass," by which 
" decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men 
and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others fore- 
ordained to everlasting death." Kvery thing, thus, is indeed 
"providential," or predetermined, by the absolute decree — the 
exact number of human beings to exist upon the earth and the 
destin}^ of every one ; the number of sermons to be preached, 
prayers to be said, songs to be sung, and curses to be uttered; 
the number of thefts, suicides, and murders ; the exact number 
of drops of water to be in each particular ocean, of leaves to be 
on each individual tree, of times that each individual human 
being is to draw his breath — all was predetermined eternally 
and unchangeably, in view of which the Creator so constituted 
the universe, that through the action and interaction of natural 
forces, or secondary causes, it would work out the stupendous 
scheme of necessity. Did Leibnitz or any other of the necessi- 
tarians or fatalists of his day ever dream of a world from top to 
bottom more fatalistic than that embraced in this scheme of 
providence ? 

The scheme of Dr. McCosh teaches that God did not by direct 
agency raise the storm which wrecked the Spanish Armada 



238 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

when it threatened the liberty and the religion of England, nor 
calm the wind to the favoring breezes which enabled William of 
Orange to escape the hostile fleet about to seize him, but rather 
that God had so prearranged the operation of natural causes as 
to bring about the beneficent and pre-determined results. But 
God's providence has respect, he tells us, to the most minute 
event, as well as to the greatest. These references sufficiently 
define his views, to which we have taken exception because, as 
it seems to us, they bind human volitions and actions by divine 
necessity, or decree of providence, and hence, leave no basis for 
any rational scheme of moral government — the very end for 
which all lower providential arrangements exist, and from which 
they derive their chief glory. Perhaps no living writer has ren- 
dered the cause of evangelical truth more valuable service than 
has the venerable author whom we have quoted, but his views 
on this subject are, to say the least, far from satisfying. While 
every event comes about through the operation of proximate 
natural causes, as Dr. McCosh tells us, he finds a sphere for 
providential control in those events it is not in man's power to 
foresee, or what he calls the " complications and fortuities of 
nature." But it is only because of man's inability to calculate 
these fortuities that they stand in a relation to him at all differ- 
ent from that sustained by events dependent on conditions he 
can readily understand. "As we come closer to man," says Dr. 
McCosh, " the elements of uncertainty increase. How uncertain 
are all the events on which man's bodily and external welfare 
depends ! .... A change takes place in the atmosphere which 
the individual breathes, and quickens into life a malady which 
wastes the lungs and frame till it ends in dissolution. A partic- 
ular vital vessel bursts, and instant death follows. A derange- 
ment takes place in the nerves or the brain, and henceforth the 
mind itself reels and staggers. It appears that the uncertainty 
increases the nearer we come to man, and there is nothing so 
uncertain as bodily health and human destiny." Thus, accord- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 



2 39 



ing to this theory, the world is more largely providential with 
respect to human life and destiny, than in any other respect. 
Providence is thus made dependent on uncertainty, and uncer- 
tainty is wholly relative to man's limited knowledge, for events 
seemingly the most fortuitous are but the necessary results of 
natural causes, and, not only so, but were eternally decreed to 
fall out as they do, when they do, where they do. This theory 
seems to us quite a last shift to save the doctrine of a divine 
providence. Besides, man's welfare is dependent, to a very 
large extent, upon conditions it is in his power to control ; and 
man's bodily health and destiny, instead of being the most 
uncertain of all things, are, with all the sanitary science now 
possible, and man's own willful vices and follies aside, among 
the things most nearly certain. 

To the thoughtful reader we shall need to offer no apology for 
further illustrating the view last presented, and enriching these 
pages, by the following lengthy passage from The Natural His- 
tory of Enthusiasm, by Rev. Isaac Taylor, a writer of rare excel- 
lence of spirit and of unusual metaphysical acumen. Having 
referred to the " substantial if not immovable substratum of 
causes and effects, upon which, for the important and practical 
purposes of life, calculations of futurity may be formed," Taylor 
says: 

"The second, and the less numerous, class of events that 
make up the course of human life are those which no sagacity 
could have anticipated; for though in themselves they were 
only the natural consequences of common causes, yet those 
causes were either concealed or remote, and were, therefore, to 
us and our agency the same as if they had been absolutely for- 
tuitous. By far the larger proportion of these accidents arises 
from the intricate connections of the social system. The 
thread of every life is entangled with other threads beyond all 
reach of calculation, the weal and woe of each depends, by innu- 
merable correspondences, upon the will, and caprices, and fort- 



240 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

une, not merely of the individuals of his immediate circle, but 
those of myriads of whom he knows nothing. Or, strictly 
speaking, the tie of mutual influence passes without a break, 
from hand to hand, through the human family. There is no 
independence, no insulation in the lot of man ; and therefore 
there can be no absolute calculation of fortunes; for he whose 
caprice or will is to govern that lot, stands, perhaps, at the dis- 
tance of a thousand removes from the 'subject of it, and the 
attenuated influence winds its way in a thousand meanders 
before it reaches the point of its destined operation. 

" It is by the admirable combination of the two principles of 
order and disorder, of uniformity and variety, of certainty and 
of chance, that the faculties and desires are wrought up to their 
full play of energy and vivacity, of reason and feeling. But it 
is especially in connection with the doctrine of providence that 
we have at present to consider these two elements of human 
life ; and as to the first of them, it is evident that the settled 
order of causes and effects, so far as it may be ascertained by 
observation and experience, claims the respect and obedience of 
every intelligent agent ; since it is nothing less than the will of 
the Author of nature, legibly written upon the constitution of 
the world. This will is sanctioned by immediate rewards and 
punishments; health, wealth, prosperity, are the usual conse- 
quents of obedience ; while sickness, poverty, degradation, are 
the almost certain inflictions that attend a negligent interpreta- 
tion, or a presumptuous disregard of it. The dictates of pru- 
dence are in truth the commands of God ; and his benevolence 
is vindicated by the fact that the miseries of life are, to a very 
great extent, attributable to a contempt of those commands. 

" But there is a higher government of men, as moral and 
religious beings, which is carried on chiefly by the fortuities of 
life. Those unforeseen accidents, which so often control the lot 
of men, constitute a superstratum in the system of human 
affairs, wherein, peculiarly, the divine providence holds empire 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 24 1 

for the accomplishment of its special purposes. It is from this 
hidden and inexhaustible mine of chances — chances, as we must 
call them — that the Governor of the world draws, with unfath- 
omable skill, the materials of his dispensation toward each indi- 
vidual of mankind. The world of nature affords no instances 
of complicated and exact contrivance comparable to that which 
so arranges the vast chaos of contingencies as to produce, with 
unerring precision, a special order of events adapted to the 
character of every individual of the human family. Amid the 
whirl of myriads of fortuities, the means are selected and com- 
bined for constructing as many independent machineries of 
moral discipline as there are moral agents in the world ; and 
each apparatus is at once complete in itself and complete as part 
of a universal movement. 

" If the special intentions of Providence toward individuals 
were effected by the aid of supernatural interpositions, the 
power and presence of the Supreme Disposer might indeed be 
more strikingly displayed than it is ; but his skill much less. 
And herein especially is manifested the perfection of the divine 
wisdom, that the most surprising conjunctions of events are 
brought about by the simplest means, and in a manner so per- 
fectly in harmony with the ordinary course of human affairs that 
the hand of the Mover is ever hidden beneath second causes, 
and is descried only by the eye of pious affection. This is, in 
fact, the great miracle of Providence— that no miracles are 
needed to accomplish its purposes. Countless series of events 
are traveling on from remote quarters toward the same point ; 
and each series moves in the beaten track of natural occur- 
rences ; but their intersection at the very moment in which they 
meet shall serve, perhaps, to give a new direction to the affairs 
of an empire. The materials of the machinery of Providence 
are all of common quality ; but their combination displays noth- 
ing less than infinite skill." 

The entertaining writer of the quoted paragraph tells us that 
16 



242 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

every Christian should entertain "a strong and consoling belief 
of the doctrine of a Particular Providence, which cares for the 
welfare of each; " and that "in the divine management of the 
fortuities of life there may also be very plainly perceived a dis- 
pensation of moral exercise specifically adapted to the temper 
and powers of the individual. . . . Whoever is quite uncon- 
scious of this sort of overruling of his affairs by means of 
apparent accidents must be very little addicted to habits of intel- 
ligent reflection. . . . By such strong and nicely fitted move- 
ments of the machine of Providence is it that the tasks of life 
are distributed where best they may be performed, and its bur- 
dens apportioned where best they may be sustained." 

Even Taylor's clear and beautiful presentation of this theory 
which identifies God's providence and the course of events pro- 
duced solely by natural agencies working always and every- 
where invariably in the same order — and no one could present it 
in a clearer or more interesting light than did Isaac Taylor — is 
far from satisfying the demands of reason and Christian faith. 
True, it links this chain of necessarily related causes and effects 
evolved by the operation of unconscious forces, somewhere in 
the infinite past, to a creative decree of Infinite Wisdom, thus 
marrying naturalism and theism. As every thing comes about 
in "the settled order of causes and effects," why should those 
events which come about by the concurrence and interaction of 
forces so numerous and remote as utterly to baffle human fore- 
sight, and to be rightly considered a "vast chaos of contingen- 
cies," be yet, for the purposes of well-being and moral disci- 
pline, and "with unerring precision," a "special order of events 
adapted to the character of every individual of the human fam- 
ily f " The difficulty is greatly increased if we allow the play 
of that freedom of the human will which is the sole basis of 
any rational theory of a moral government of mankind; for 
many men are not what they should be, not doing what they 
should be doing, and are where and what they should not be. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 243 

How, then, can an invariable order of natural sequence bring at 
every moment to every man, "with unerring precision," that 
particular combination of events exactly suited to his moral 
need? Moreover, it is a matter of fact that men of widely dif- 
fering moral needs are subject to the same or like combinations 
of events, and that men of apparently like moral needs are 
environed by widely differing combinations of events. So this 
naturalistic theory of a divine providence seems untenable, as 
being utterly inconsistent with all conceivable theories of free 
agency, and not harmonizing well even with the doctrine of 
necessity, unless, indeed, we affirm that a combination of events 
adapted to cultivate the spiritual in one man is in another 
adapted to develop the carnal, and that God decreed it thus. It 
teaches that every man's character, occupation, and environment 
are what Providence appointed, since, as Mr. Taylor puts it, an 
"exact contrivance" of Providence "so arranges the vast chaos 
of contingencies as to produce, with unerring precision, a 
special order of events adapted to every individual of the 
human family." As an explanation of the moral condition of 
society, upon any principles compatible with the idea of merit 
and demerit, it is a bald and hopeless failure, for it makes Provi- 
dence stand in the same relation to the minister proclaiming to 
men free salvation for all who will receive it and to the wretch 
dealing out damning drink, as the "machine of Providence," by 
its "strong and nicely fitting movements," brings to every man 
the divinely allotted work he was divinely fitted to perform. 

In his " Nature and the Supernatural, as Together Constituting 
the One System of God," Horace Bushnell thus enters his pro- 
test to the naturalistic theory of the method of Providence: 
"God is (according to this theory) only a great mechanic, who 
has made a great machine for the sake of the machine, having 
his work all done long ages ago. Moral government is out of 
the question— there is no government but the predestined roll- 
ing of the machine. If a man sins, the sin is only the play of 



244 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

cause and effect — that is, of the machine. If he repents, the 
same is true — sin, repentance, hope, love, joy are all develop- 
ments of cause and effect — that is, of the machine. If a soul 
gives itself to God, in love, the love is but a grind-out of some 
wheel he has set turning, or it may be turns, in the scheme of 
nature. If I look up to him, and call him Father, he can only 
pity the conceit of my filial feeling, knowing that it is attributa- 
ble to nothing but the run of mere necessary cause and effect. 
If I look up to him for help, he can only hand me over to 
cause and effect, of which I am a link myself, and bid me stay in 
my place to be what I am made to be. . . . If there is nothing 
but God and nature, and God himself has no relations to nature, 
save just to fill it and keep it on its way, then, being ourselves a 
part of nature, we are only a link, each one, in a chain let down 
into a well, where nothing else can ever touch us but the link 
next above ! O it is horrible. Our soul freezes at the thought. 
We want, we must have something better." 

To satisfy the demands of reason and our moral and spiritual 
cravings, a theory of the providence of God must harmonize 
with — * 

i. The sovereignty, holiness, and goodness of God. 

2. The freedom of man's will as freedom is asserted in his 
consciousness, and demanded by reason as the condition of 
moral government. 

3. The observed facts in man's life and in the world about 

him. 

Turning now to the doctrinal standard of our Church, we find 

that it declares : 

1. That God, in his providence, ordinarily works through the 
instrumentality of laws or means ; yet is free to work with and 
above them. 

2. God's providence over the wicked is not designed to lead 
them to destruction, but to a knowledge of his goodness, and 
his sovereign power over them, and thus to become a means of 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 245 

their repentance and reformation, or to be a warning to others ; 
and if the wicked make it an occasion of hardening their 
hearts, it is because of their perversity, and not from necessity. 

3. God's providence, though embracing all creatures in a gen- 
eral way, extends in a special manner to his Church. 

On the important doctrine of the providence of God, there- 
fore, as in relation to other fundamental doctrines of Christian- 
ity, Cumberland Presb3^terian theology is a protest against the 
Calvinistic idea of necessity which attributes every event to the 
decree and the efficient agency of God. While our early theo- 
logical writers have left us but little upon this subject, the Lect- 
ures of Rev. Reuben Burrow, D.D., who was for some time a 
professor of theology in a college of the denomination, contains 
a lecture that is clear and vigorous in thought, and valuable as 
an exposition of our view of "Divine Providence," from which 
we extract the following characteristic passages : 

"It may be assumed and fairly maintained that, as there is no 
eternal evil in the universe, and Providence could not produce 
it in harmony with his will and attributes, it could only come 
into existence by disobedience and a violation of the supreme 
will and law by creatures. Moral evil is a transgression of 
the moral law ; it is an act against the whole Godhead — decrees, 
laws, will, and nature, all. Such a thing as moral evil can not 
possibly be willed by the Holy One." 

"Was it possible for any that were doomed to sin and death to 
escape, or for such as were ordained to life to be lost ? There 
can be no change. But who did all this ? We are told that the 
most wise and holy Providence did it all. He ordered and gov- 
erned all the sins of all men and angels, and then punished 
some of them in hell for their sins. Then we are told that he 
who did all this is neither the author or approver of at least a 
part of his providential doings. As to the authorship, there 
need be no dispute when we are told that Providence did it all. 
This is the point, any way, against which I enter my protest." 



246 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

"There is no necessity for running into such extremes by- 
ascribing every thing which transpires in the universe to Provi- 
dence. The position is wrong and contradicts itself, and never 
can result in any good whatever. . . . Permissive decrees and 
permissive providences must be associated together, and, if 
they mean any thing different from what is meant by absolute 
decrees and providences, must signify free agency and accounta- 
bility, and, as a matter of course, freedom from the reign and 
rule of absolute decrees and providences, . . . that freedom of 
volition which the Creator granted to his accountable creat- 
ures." 

" But it is said that Providence has not bestowed his gifts 
alike upon all this world; that he has bestowed more of his 
munificence upon some than upon others, and cast their lots in 
this world under circumstances widely different. . . . Much of 
the difference, however, which our eyes behold in earthly things 
is owing to the providence or improvidence of earth's children, 
and not attributable to our heavenly Father. We do much our- 
selves to make our lots easy or hard in life, by our improvement or 
misimprovement of the gifts of Providence." 

The late Rev. Richard Beard, D.D., eminent as a scholar, as an 
instructor in theology, and as endowed with all the loveliness of 
eminent piety, in his First Series of Lectures on Theology, dis- 
cusses Divine Providence, in a clear and forcible exposition, a 
few extracts from which will sufficiently indicate his views : 

"The subject is vaguely understood. We associate in our 
minds the idea of a particular providence with the idea of 
necessity, and become confused. We can not distinguish God's 
overruling whatever is done, and his doing, or causing to be 
done, whatever is done. Yet the two are as different as any two 
facts can be." 

Again : " God foresees, overrules, and controls all events. He 
is not, however, the intentional author of all events. ... If 
God were the only mind in the universe, it would be true that 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. . 247 

every action and every event must proceed from him, since mind 
is necessary to action. But there are subordinate minds 
endowed with the power of action. These minds become 
sources of action." 

The inquiry, In what way does God exercise his providence? 
Dr. Beard thus answers : 

" 1. In providing for the wants of men, especially of good 
men." Matt. v. 45. 

" 2. In leaving sometimes his own children in darkness and 
doubt for purposes of discipline." Job is an example. 

"3. In afflicting good men for the purpose of promoting their 
sanctification. I allude more particularly to bodily afflictions, 
and to trouble in our circumstances." Ps. cxix. 67, 71, 75. 

" 4. In afflicting good men, that they may serve as examples 
of faith and patience to others." Job is instanced. 

"5. In afflicting wicked men for the purpose of bringing 
them to repentance." Manasseh, king of Judah, an instance. 

" 6. God exercises his providences in overruling the outbreaks 
of the selfish and lawless passions of men for the promotion of 
his own glory." Pharaoh and the king of Assyria. 

" 7. In withholding his Spirit and grace from some wicked 
men, whereby they are judicially given over to hardness of 
heart and blindess of mind, in consequence of their former 
wickedness and rebellion." 2 Thess. ii. 11, 12. 

The extracts here given from two authors who were leading 
theological teachers of the body may be regarded as a correct 
expression of the current views of Cumberland Presbyterians 
touching the doctrine of God's providence, and as substantially 
interpreting the doctrinal symbol of the Church. It is to be 
noted that, in addition to the points previously specified, this 
scheme of God's providence over mankind fully recognizes and 
emphasizes that rational freedom which is a part of man's origi- 
nal endowment, and indispensable to the idea of his moral respon- 
sibility. Thus our medium and safe theology conserves, in the 



248 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

doctrine of providence, as in the other great fundamental prin- 
ciples of Christianity, such consistency of parts as clearly har- 
monizes the moral government of the world and the moral 
endowments of the subjects of that government, and thereby 
justifies the ways of the moral Governor in his dealings with 
the children of men. 

" Religious sentiment has always insisted," says Lotze, " at the 
outset very obscurely, though vigorously, that something new 
must happen in the world— something that is not a mere conse- 
quence of what has gone before— and there must exist in indi- 
vidual spirits just this capacity to initiate a new series of 
events ; and therefore, in brief, a freedom of acting or primarily 
of willing; "... and that "in this way has the problem origi- 
nated which leads to the conception of a government." 
Moreover, this freedom of action— this wonderful power in man 
to be himself a cause, the author of moral sequences which else 
would not have been, is demanded " because we regard it," says 
Lotze, "as the co?iditio sine qua non of the fulfillment of ethical 
commands." 

"It seems therefore," says Lotze in concluding his attempt at 
a philosophy of the Divine Government of the world, "that it is 
not at all nature directly, but primarily the inner life of the 
world of spirits onfy, that forms the object to which immediate 
interventions in the government of the world could have rela- 
tion ; and this in such manner that the interventions would not 
make use of the individual spirits merely as passive points of 
transition, but would supply their own activity with induce- 
ments and incentives, which the external course of nature can 
not offer them." By this means there would be introduced 
"into the world new beginnings of spiritual movements that are 
in conformity with the plan of the world; " and the new events 
we are to regard, according to Lotze, " as products of the recip- 
rocal action of God with individual spirits, by means of which 
there is brought to pass in them an ideal appearance, of a truljr 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 249 

valid content." As a final summary of the results of his effort 
at a philosophical view of the world, I^otze formulates in three 
propositions what he regards as " the characteristic convictions 
of every religious apprehension, in contradistinction to a merely 
intellectual view of the world : " 

" (1) Ethical laws we designate as the will of God. 

" (2) Individual finite spirits we designate, not as products of 
nature, but as children of God. 

" (3) Actuality we designate, not as a mere course of the 
world, but as a kingdom of God." 

L,otze's scheme of the world as a totality makes all other 
parts subordinate to man's well-being, and man's glory and high- 
est bliss to consist in those ethical and religious relations which 
bring him into favor and fellowship with God. The supreme 
end of the creation and of the government of the world is the 
kingdom of God, for the establishment, progress, and final tri- 
umph of which kingdom God's providence, by the direct action 
of his supreme will on finite minds, is so shaping the issues of 
time as to culminate in the fulfillment of his purpose and 
prophecy concerning the incoming glorious dispensation which 
is to be everlasting. 



250 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



CHAPTER VIII. 

TH^ fau, of man— effects on the; original trans- 
gressors— effects ON THE RACE — THE COVE- 
NANT OF GRACE, ETC. 

FAU, OF MAN. 
^ " 17. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of 
Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit ; whereupon God was pleased, 
for his own glory and the good of mankind, to reveal the Covenant of 
Grace in Christ, by which a gracious probation was established for all men. 

" 18. By this sin they fell from their original uprightness, lost their com- 
munion with God, and so became dead in sin, and defiled in all the faculties 
of their moral being. They being the root of all mankind, sin entered 
into the world through their act, and death by sin, and so death passed 
upon all men. 

" 19. From this original corruption also proceeds actual transgression. 

"20. The remains of this corrupt nature are felt by those who are 
regenerated, nor will *hey altogether cease to operate and disturb during 
the present life. 

" 21. Sin, being a transgression of the law of God, brings guilt upon the 
transgressor, and subjects him to the wrath of God and to endless tor 
ment, unless pardoned through the mediation of Christ." 

god's covenant with man. 

"22. The first covenant made with man was a Covenant of Works 
wherein life was promised to Adam upon condition of perfect and per- 
sonal obedience. 

" 23. Man by his fall having made himself incapable of life by that 
covenant, the Lord was pleased to make the second, commonly called the 
Covenant of Grace, wherein he freely offers unto sinners life and salvation 
by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved. 
This covenant is frequently set forth in the Scriptures by the name of a 
testament, in reference to the death of Jesus Christ, the testator, and to 
the everlasting inheritance, with all things belonging to it, therein 
bequeathed. 

" 24. Under the Old Testament dispensation the Covenant of Grace was 
administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 25 I 

lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the Jews— all foresigni- 
fying Christ to come— which were sufficient, through the operation of the 
Holy Spirit, to instruct them savingly in the knowledge of God, and build 
them up in the faith of the Messiah. 

" 25. Under the New Testament dispensation, wherein Christ, the sub- 
stance, is set forth, the ordinances in which the Covenant of Grace is dis- 
pensed are the preaching of the word and the administration of the sac- 
raments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, which are administered with 
more simplicity, yet in them it is held forth in more fullness and spiritual 
efficacy to all nations, Jews and Gentiles. 

" 26. As children were included with their parents in the Covenant of 
Grace under the Old Testament dispensation, so are they included in it 
under the new, and should, as under the old, receive the appropriate sign 
and seal thereof." 

TN these sections of the Confession, and in the few that imme- 
■^ diately follow them, are contained doctrines of transcendent 
importance on account of their practical relation to man's duty 
and- accountability, his moral career upon the earth, and his ever- 
lasting destiny : man as endowed with the intelligence and free- 
dom which make him a subject of moral law; man as involved 
in sin and condemnation because of the violation of that law ; 
man as the subject of a merciful scheme of redemption through 
divine mediation and expiation ; man as the author of his own 
destiny by his power to accept or to reject the offered salvation 
— these and allied subjects are as important and interesting as 
any that can challenge attention or absorb reason's profoundest 
meditation. On these great and cardinal themes is Cumberland 
Presbyterian theology in harmony with the facts of man's nat- 
ure and condition, the dictates of enlightened judgment, and the 
plain teaching of the word of God? If discordant to any of 
these tests, so far must that system be rejected ; if accordant 
with all, then must it stand approved by the highest tribunals 
by which moral and religious systems can be judged. 

Next to the Bible itself a plain, logical doctrinal formula 
which embodies substantially the teachings of the Bible on these 
great themes must be esteemed of inestimable value. When we 
consider how numerous, varied, and even antagonistic have been 



252 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

the interpretations given to the Bible in some of its most impor- 
tant parts, and how absurd, hurtful, and demoralizing have been 
many practices growing out of these false interpretations, we 
should be ready to see in this brief, rational statement of belief 
touching the great facts of man's moral freedom, sin, and 
supernatural grace and redemption, a " confession " for which 
Cumberland Presbyterians may with justice earnestly contend 
as embodying " the faith (concerning the common salvation) for- 
merly delivered to the saints." 

Departing from the order of the topics in the sections of the 
Confession, as far as seems necessary in order to a logical 
arrangement of the doctrinal points, we notice : 

1. Man was created in a state of holiness. 

As it is expressed in the section (11) on " creation : " "God 
created man in his own image, . . . they having the law of God 
written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it, being upright and 
free from all bias to evil." In section 18 it is declared that the 
foreparents fell from "their original uprightness," and so "lost 
their communion with God." The passage cited in section n, 
to prove that man's original state was one of uprightness, is 
Keel. vii. 29, " L,o, this only have I found, that God hath made 
man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." The 
same passage is cited under section 18, to prove man's fall from 
the original uprightness. It is doubtful, however, whether this 
passage, so often quoted in the connections named, has primary 
reference to either an original state of holiness or a lapse from 
such a state. 

The declaration that man was made " in the image of God" 
seems to furnish unquestionable ground for the belief that 
uprightness, or holiness, is the moral condition in which the first 
parents of the race came from the Creator's hand, to begin their 
moral career upon the earth. In what does that "image of 
God " consist? " So God created man in his own image ; in the 
image of God created he him." Certainly this image would 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 



2 53 



embrace the communicable moral attributes of God, a distinc- 
tion which would separate man from the brute creatures by 
what a philosopher calls " the greatest difference in the uni- 
verse." There is great value in the suggestion of Dr. Joseph 
Parker, who exhorts us " not to mock one another, and taunt- 
ingly ask if we are made in the image and likeness of God, but 
to steadfastly gaze on Christ, marking the perfectness of his 
lineaments, the harmony of his attributes, the sublimity of his 
purpose, and then, pointing to him in his solitude of beauty and 
holiness, we may exclaim, ' Behold the image of God.' " 

As to the metaphysical distinction that holiness is not an 
endowment, and that, therefore, before Adam had put forth 
moral action he was destitute of moral character, it is enough to 
answer, with Dr. Richard Beard, that before man acted, after God 
had breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, man was " so 
endowed that all the tendencies of his nature were then toward 
knowledge, righteousness, and holiness." 

Rev. Joseph Miller, B.D., in his admirable treatise on Hamar- 
tiology, puts all the features into "one picture " as follows : " (i) 
Intimate and unbroken communion of the created spirit with 
God ; (2) love to him with the faith and obedience which spring 
from love ; (3) holy conformity with the divine will, which raises 
man above the world and confers supremacy above all other 
creatures; (4) the 'real' freedom, distinguished from 'formal,' 
though growing from it, which comes from divine sonship and 
holy love; (5) a clear and salutary knowledge of God himself; 
(6) a goodness, purity, and truth, as yet unmixed with evil." 

Lordship over all creatures, righteousness, and true holiness, 
with immortality, constitute, according to another symbol, the 
elements of that "divine image" expressive of man's original 
state. Had man continued in this state of original uprightness, 
freely and constantly choosing the will of God as the rule of his 
behavior, he would have been completely happy, and, by some 
provision of divine Wisdom, would have become heir of immor- 



254 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

tality without the pain and humiliation of death and corruption, 
but 

2. Man fell from original uprightness. 

Satan's subtlety tempted to disobedience of God's command, 
and our first parents, freely choosing evil, sinned ; sinning, they 
fell. Such is the brief account of that moral lapse which, occur- 
ring at the fountain head of humanity, subjected the race to 
death and all the moral woes attendant on sin. 

Why did not God, some one will ask, seeing that he is infi- 
nitely wise to foresee what would come to pass, and infinitely 
good to choose the happiness of his creatures, make man incapa- 
ble of sinning ? It was morally impossible for God to make man 
a subject of moral law, and yet not a subject of moral law. 
Without power to disobey, there could not be freedom ; without 
freedom, there could not be virtue ; without virtue, there could 
not be the happiness which the infinite Benevolence chooses as 
the end of his vast moral empire. 

" There is, doubtless, a higher necessity," says the Rev. Joseph 
Miller, " to love God and conform in all things to his holy will, 
wherein consists the real liberty of humanity, but such love and 
conformity is really valueless if it be not the voluntary and 
deliberate outcome of the will, or if it be impossible for the 
creature to do otherwise. But sin, though possible in the very 
conception of created personality, is not necessary, since it was 
in the power of the first man to resist and overcome all seduc- 
tions to evil, just as Christ did, just as the regenerate are 
expected to do increasingly as the principle of grace and spirit- 
ual life grows stronger in them." 

" Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, 
fell from the estate wherein they were created by sinning against 
God," says our Catechism ; and it adds that the specific " sin 
whereby our first parents fell from the estate wherein they were 
created was their disobeying God's command in eating the for- 
bidden fruit." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 255 

in their view of the nature of man and the introduction of sin 
into the world, Cumberland Presbyterians emphasize the doc- 
trine of man's freedom, which freedom they hold to be insepara- 
ble from the idea of sin, and the ground of the just vindication 
of the providence of God respecting the fall. Without freedom 
virtue is an illusion, and what we have been accustomed to think 
of as God*s vast empire of rational and virtuous creatures, the 
crowning glory of his creation, is but a dream of the imagina- 
tion. Any scheme of necessity as an interpretation of the fall 
must dishonor both man and God, making man incapable of 
virtue, making God to choose evil for its own sake. Xor was 
Adam free to disobey the divine command, with power of con- 
trary choice, in an}' other sense than that in which the man who 
now lies or steals knows himself to be free in putting forth the 
volition so to do. and as having power to abstain from so willing 
and doing. Xot in mockery, but in sincerity and with deepest 
solicitude for human weal. God said to the first parents, and 
evermore is saying to humanity, " Behold, I set before you good 
and evil, blessing and cursing, life and death ; now, therefore, 
choose life, that ye may live." 

3. The state into which their si?i brought the first parents. 

The Confession says (section 18) "they fell from their original 
uprightness, lost their communion with God, and so became 
dead in sin and defiled in all the faculties of their moral being; " 
and the Catechism says that "Adam's sin corrupted his moral 
nature and alienated him from God." Now, it may be noted in 
passing that all the things here affirmed to be effects coming 
directly upon the transgressors themselves are not only effects 
that could come, but results that must come under the conditions 
supposed. The Bible account and the Confession accord with 
the facts of human nature and the requirements of enlightened 
reason. 

The Council of Trent declared : " If any one shall not confess 
that the first man, Adam, when the command of God had been 



256 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

transgressed in paradise, lost holiness and justice, and by that 
offense incurred the wrath of God, and that the whole man in 
soul and body had been thereby thoroughly deteriorated, let 
him be accursed." 

" Sin, being a transgression of the law of God, brings guilt 
upon the transgressor, and subjects him to the wrath of God and 
to endless torment, unless pardoned through the mediation of 
Christ." — Confession^ section 21. 

The change which came to Adam as a subject of moral law, in 
consequence of his fall, embraces these points : 

1. The loss of the original uprightness, or righteousness, of 
character. Righteousness is the state of a free moral agent so 
long as he chooses in accordance with the will of God, or in 
accordance with what is essentially right. 

2. He incurred guilt, falling under the condemnation of the 
holy law ordained for his government, in consequence of choos- 
ing to disobey a positive and clearly revealed divine command. 

3. He became obnoxious to the penalty of the violated law. 
Before the transgression obedience entitled him to the rewards 
stipulated in the covenant of works; after the transgression he 
was justly liable to all the penalties set over against disobedi- 
ence. 

4. Corruption of his moral faculties. Retaining all his facul- 
ties, the transgressor experiences a depraved operation of these. 
Intelligence is blinded, sensibility blunted, will perverted. In 
the language of the Confession, man became "dead in sin." 

5. Loss of communion with God. " His thoughts no longer 
revolved around God as their common center. His thoughts no 
longer entwined around Jehovah, as the vine twines around the 
oak. He began to cherish enmity against him whom formerly 
he supremely loved. He became terrified for that God whom 
formerly he delighted to meet. He sought his happiness no 
more in communing with, but in fleeing from, God." (Frame, 
on Original Sin.) 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 257 

6. Internally he experienced consciousness of unworthiness, 
depravity, guilt, remorse, and the pangs of mental anguish inci- 
dent to the apprehension of evil in consequence of sin. 

7. The death of the body. The Confession declares (Sec. 18) 
that sin entered the world through the act of the first parents, 
■" and death by sin," which clearly implies that aside from man's 
fall death would not have been in the world. If Adam's sin 
brought death into the world, it must have brought death upon 
him, and hence, death is to be included in the effects of the fall, 
upon the original transgressors. Such seems to have been the 
view of the leading theologians in the first Christian centuries. 
41 Death was the punishment which Jehovah had threatened to 
inflict on the transgressors of his law. Nevertheless the act of 
transgression was not immediately succeeded by death, but by a 
train of evils which came upon both the man and the woman, 
introductory to death, and testifying that man had become 
mortal. Accordingly both death and physical evils were con- 
sidered the effects of Adam's sin, as by Iraeneus and others." 
(Hagenbach's Hist, of Doct.) 

When God laid upon Adam the prohibition — that of the tree 
of the knowledge of good and evil he should not eat — the com- 
mand was accompanied (Gen. ii. 17) with the explicit warning 
"For in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," 
which passage, as well as numerous New Testament passages, 
seems unmistakably to teach that our first parents were made 
liable to bodily death as a consequence of their sin. 

Since man's body was doubtless essentially the same in the 
Kdenic state as it is now, and since sin is a moral act involving 
the exercise of free will, and has no necessary direct effect upon 
the body, we must suppose that death, as the penalty of trans- 
gression, came about, not by divine infliction of mortality upon 
an organism essentially immortal, but by Adam's forfeiture of 
the provisions by which exemption from death would have fol- 
lowed as the reward of obedience. As to his body, man is 
17 



258 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

essentially a part of and of a piece with the animal world about 
him, in the very constitution of which are inseparably involved 
the facts of change, decline, and death, " dust thou art, and unto 
dust thou shalt return," being as truly a law of man's physical 
being as it is of the worm he treads upon. 

It is not out of place in this connection to call special atten- 
tion to the reasonableness and the simplicity of Cumberland 
Presbyterian theology on the subject of the introduction of sin 
into the world, a view which admits to the fullest man's freedom 
and responsibility, while it justifies to the fullest the goodness 
and righteousness of God. Man is in fact a subject of moral 
government, giving account at the bar of his own conscience 
and before the law of a God whom his moral nature postulates. 
If we receive the biblical account at all, and believe man's nat- 
ural powers of head and heart obscured through sin's blight, we 
must not invest Adam with the weakness of a moral infant, but 
with the endowment of intelligence, sensibility, and will in such 
a measure as to render him a fit subject for the probation 
through which he was called to pass, and in which probation, 
though encompassed by transcendent motives to stand, yet, 
endowed with power of self-determination to either the right or 
the wrong, he fell and involved himself and posterity in sin and 
death. 

"How the wrong volition originated in a perfectly holy 
mind," says a thoughtful writer, " has been the crux cruets of 
speculative theologians from that day to the present, while it is 
likely to remain such in all subsequent periods. With its origin, 
I have at present, however, no concern except to deny that it 
was kindled by divine power. To imagine this were not merely 
to represent God as the cause of sin, but as being himself the 
sinner." 

In like manner Howe insists : " Man's defection from his 
primitive state was merely voluntary, and from the uncon- 
strained choice of his own mutable and self-determining will. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 259 

The pure and holy nature of God could never be the original of 
man's sin. This is evident in itself. God disclaims it ; nor can 
any affirm it of him without denying his very being. He could 
not be the cause of unholiness but by ceasing to be holy, which 
would suppose him mutably holy; and if either God or man 
must be confessed mutable, it is no difficulty where to lay it : 
whatever God is, he is essentially ; and necessity of existence, 
of being always what he is, remains everlastingly the funda- 
mental attribute of his being." 

The following excellent note we transfer from Dr. A. A. 
Hodge's Commentary on the Westminster Confession : " God 
did neither cause nor approve Adam's sin. He forbade it, and 
presented motives which should have deterred from it. He cre- 
ated Adam hoty and fully capable of obedience, and with suffi- 
cient knowledge of his duty, and then left him alone to his trial. 
If it be asked why God, who abhors sin, and who benevolently 
desires the excellence and happiness of his creatures, should 
sovereignly determine to permit such a fountain of pollution, 
degradation, and misery to be opened, we can only say, with 
profound reverence, ' Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in 

thy sight.' " 

As Dr. Hodge observes, the two great questions which have 
perplexed men's minds, in regard to the fall, are (1) how sin 
could originate in the soul of a being created holy, and (2) why 
a holy God should permit sin. Upon the latter point it is in 
place to observe that God did not permit the fall of man for its 
own sake, but because of a purpose to make this world the the- 
ater of happiness through an economy of free moral agents, to 
which economy liability to rebellion against the divine govern- 
ment would be an inseparable attendant. Furthermore, as 
Hodge observes, " it appears to be God's general plan, and one 
eminently wise and righteous, to introduce all new created sub- 
jects of moral government into a state of probation for a 
time, in which he makes their permanent character and destiny 



260 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

depend upon their own action. He creates them holy, yet capa- 
ble of falling." The motives which swayed the minds of the 
first parents to evil, despite the divine prohibition and warning, 
Dr. Hodge thus enumerates : " (i) Natural appetite for the 
attractive fruit. (2) Natural desire for knowledge. (3) The 
persuasive power of the superior mind and will of Satan. In 
this last fact — that they were seduced thereto by the subtlety of 
Satan — much of the solution of this mystery lies." 

We must now examine the doctrine of the Confession in rela- 
tion to — 

4. The effects Adam's sin brought upon the human race. 

Herein Cumberland Presbyterian teaching takes a wide and 
radical departure from the Westminster symbol, and from all 
hyper-Calvinistic standards. While it is impossible for us to 
enter upon a general discussion of the important and very inter- 
esting subject now before us, it is appropriate that enough be 
said to show the doctrinal attitude of the Church, and the extent 
of the divergence from the theological system against which the 
Church was in its very organization an earnest and explicit doc- 
trinal protest. 

In answer to the question (16), " What effect did Adam's sin 
have upon his posterity? " our Catechism says : 

"Adam's sin corrupted his moral nature and alienated him 
from God ; and all mankind, descending from him by ordinary 
generation, inherit his corrupt nature, and become subject to sin 
and death." 

And in reply to the 17th question, "Into what estate did the 
fall bring mankind?" similarly, and with seeming repetition of 
idea, the answer is, " The fall brought mankind into a state of 
alienation from God, which is spiritual death." 

Further, in reply to question 21st, "What are the evils of that 
estate into which mankind fell? " the reply is : 

" Mankind, in consequence of the fall, have no communion 
with God, discern not spiritual things, prefer sin to holiness, 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 26 1 

suffer from the fear of death and remorse of conscience, and 
from the apprehension of future punishment." 

In harmony with these answers, the language of the Confes- 
sion is : " They (the first parents) being the root of all mankind, 
sin entered into the world through their act, and death by sin, 
and so death passed upon all men." 

A comparison and analysis of these statements of the Cate- 
chism and the Confession seem to justify the following proposi- 
tions as representing the Cumberland Presbyterian view of 
the effects which Adam's sin has entailed upon his posterity: 

1. Adam's posterity, because of his fall, as the Catechism 
affirms, "inherit his corrupt nature." As a result of this cor- 
ruption of nature, men "have no communion with God," "dis- 
cern not spiritual things," " prefer sin to holiness," " suffer from 
fear of death and from remorse of conscience," etc. Thus the 
race, through its relation to its first parents, has " become sub- 
ject to sin," in the sense that the inherited moral corruption is 
the source of so great a tendency to sin as to make it certain 
that, grace aside, all the individuals of the race will sin and con- 
tinue to sin. It is because all mankind " descend from Adam by 
ordinary generation," that they " inherit his corruption of nat- 
ure." There is no intimation in the Confession or the Cate- 
chism that it is because of any positive divine appointment, or 
even that it is in accordance with the divine will that Adam's 
posterity "inherit his corruption of nature," but that it results 
simply from the natural relationship of Adam to his posterity, 
which relationship involves that law of heredity by which off- 
spring inherit the characteristics of the parents. 

Our standards are silent as to the degree of this corruption of 
man's nature, unless the expressions " dead in sin " and "defiled 
in all the faculties of their moral being," are to be interpreted to 
mean that the depravity not only extends to all the functions of 
man's moral nature, but also that it is complete. " This innate 
hereditary depravity," says Dr. Hodge, " is total, for by it we are 



262 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and 
wholly inclined to evil;" and this " moral corruption which 
results from the penal withdrawing of God's Holy Spirit in the 
case of our first parents," he further asserts, " is necessarily con- 
veyed to all those of their descendants who are produced by 
ordinary generation." It is not improbable — it is quite certain, 
indeed — that among Cumberland Presbyterian divines will be 
found quite numerous shades of opinion upon this point. If, as 
Dr. Hodge asserts, man is so depraved in his moral faculties as 
to be " disabled and opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to 
evil," we must expect to find among men, aside from the renew- 
ing grace of God, not a single virtuous act. Bad as the world is, 
and it is certainly very bad, it does not seem so bad as that 
theory makes it. Even where gospel light has never shone, 
there have been beautiful illustrations of the domestic and phil- 
anthropic virtues and of even piety itself. We may, indeed, 
with Augustine, call the "virtues" of the pagans only "splen- 
did vices," but that is an extremely pessimistic view, and 
opposed by numberless facts that seem to show unregenerate 
and even heathen sinners capable of benevolent affections, voli- 
tions, and actions. 

Touching the extent of man's inherited depravity, the follow- 
ing paragraph from Dr. Blake's valuable little compend of the- 
ology is cited, not with approval only, but as believed to be in 
harmony with the views of the majority of the best thinkers in 
our body : 

" Before answering the question (whether the soul is totally 
depraved) we should know just what is meant by the term total 
depravity. If it means that the soul is just as corrupt as it is 
possible for it to be, then we answer in the negative. But if it 
means that every faculty of it is corrupt — that it is, without 
regeneration, unfit for heaven — then we unhesitatingly answer 
in the affirmative. There are, certainly, degrees, so to speak, in 
wickedness. Some souls are more debased and corrupt than 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 263 

others, owing to surrounding influences ; but, as stated pre- 
viously, all are defiled and wholly defiled. To illustrate : A 
glass of water containing a few grains of arsenic is a poison ; 
but twice the amount of the deadly drug will make that water a 
still greater poison. Just so with the human soul." 

2. All mankind have become subject to death. In other 
words, because of the act of the original transgressors they 
were made mortal, and thus, " through their act," " they being 
the root of all mankind," " death passed upon all men." 

Whatever other signification the word may in some instances 
have, it is unquestionable that in many passages of Scripture 
the term " death," as expressive of an effect that came upon the 
race in consequence of its relation to the original transgressor, 
is used most literally in the sense of the dissolution of the body. 
For instance, 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, can not, without ignoring alike 
the laws of language and all logical juxtaposition of ideas, be 
made to yield any other meaning of the terms " death " and 
" die," than that which they usually have as applied to bodily 
dissolution : " For since by man came death, by man came also 
the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so 
in Christ shall all be made alive." That is to say, As in conse- 
quence of his sin, all the natural descendants of Adam are par- 
takers of natural death, so through Christ shall all men be made 
alive by a resurrection of the dead. 

In Romans v. 12, we are taught, not only that by man came 
death, but why it is so : " Wherefore as by one man sin entered 
into the world, and death by sin ; and so death passed upon all 
men, for that all have sinned." 

As Calvinists rely upon this text for proof of the doctrine of 
the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity, it is well that it be 
briefly considered in this connection. And how is the text 
made to teach imputation? Simply by reading "imputation" 
into it, thus : "And so death passed upon all men, for that all 
have sinned " (in Adam). 



264 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

If we assign to the word " impute " the theological meaning 
given to it by Dr. Hodge (Commentary on the Confession, p. 
156), namely, "to lay to the charge or credit of any one as a 
ground of judicial punishment or justification," we are con- 
strained to say that we fail to find the doctrine in the Bible, and 
that it contravenes the fundamental principles of moral govern- 
ment and moral rectitude as they are taught by the word of 
God. 

If we sinned in Adam, we should repent of Adam's sin ; but 
that were a moral impossibility. We may disapprove, regret, 
deplore Adam's sin, but to repent of it, or of our having " sinned 
in him," is a moral and psychological impossibility. 

The argument runs thus : Death comes through sin. Infants 
die. But infants have committed no actual sin ; and therefore, 
the sins of another must be imputed to them— that is, laid to 
their charge as a ground of judicial punishment. 

If because of the vices of its parents a child inherits the seeds 
of disease, and early passes to the tomb, shall we say that its 
weakness, sufferings, and death are a judicial punishment 
inflicted on it by divine retribution because its parents' guilt is 
imputed to the child ? The thought is abhorrent to reason and 
to our ideas of the Judge of all, who is good and righteous in all 
his ways. Nor is the case in any degree mended, if we say that 
God's retributive justice punishes the child with death because 
the guilt of Adam's sin is imputed to it. A child may die, 
indeed, because of the sins of its parents, but not because guilty 
of them ; and thousands do annually pass in infancy to the 
grave because of the vices of parents. And so it is true that, in 
the divinely appointed economy of this world, sin and death are 
inseparably linked ; and as Adam sinned, death came to him ~ 
and since through (this) " one man sin entered the world," death 
entered by sin, for all have sinned, and must, by the very consti- 
tution of human nature, entail sin and mortality upon all born 
of them as parents sinful and mortal." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 265 

As the passage in the fifth chapter of Romans is cited by all 
imputationists in support of their position, we ask the reader's 
careful attention to the following remarks of Dr. Forbes, him- 
self an imputationist, in his most valuable Analytical Commen- 
tary on Romans, pp. 208-9 : 

" The restriction of the words, ' For that all have sinned,' to 
mere imputation is contrary to the context. The verb ' sinned ' 
must take its meaning from what precedes and follows. ' Sin ' 
in the words of verse 12, 'By one man sin entered into the 
world,' can not, as has been shown, refer to mere guilt only, or 
imputed sin. In the words again that follow in verse 13, ' For 
until the law sin was in the world,' the reference manifestly is 
to the historical existence of sin in the world, as evidenced by 
the murder of Abel by Cain, by the general violence which had 
filled the earth before the flood, and which called forth that 
awful judgment from the Lord, because ' all flesh had corrupted 
his way upon the earth,' by the sins of the Sodomites, etc., in all 
which cases sin was ' imputed ' by God to the perpetrators per- 
sonally, proving therefore that the sin for which they suffered 
was not imputed sin (in the sense of the transgression of another 
being reckoned to them), but their own personal sin." 

In theological views, no less than in other respects, it is often 
true that one extreme leads to another. In controverting the 
views of Pelagius, who taught that Adam's sin injured only 
himself, and that infants come into the world as pure as Adam 
was before the fall, his great contemporary Augustine was led to 
look upon the human race as a "compact mass, a collective 
body, responsible in its unity and solidarity," and formally pro- 
mulgated the doctrine of imputation, in these words : "As all 
men have sinned in Adam, they are justly subject to the con- 
demnation of God on account of this hereditary sin and the guilt 
thereof" 

And so the Westminster Confession : " They being the root 
of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same 



266 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their pos- 
terity, descending from them by ordinary generation." 

And so the Westminster Catechism, in the answer to the 
sixteenth question : " The covenant being made with Adam, not 
only for himself but for his posterity ; all mankind, descending 
from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with 
him, in his original transgression." 

The Rev. Mr. Miller, in his chapter on " original or birth sin," 
in the work hitherto noticed, says that " the Westminster Con- 
fession is characteristically severe," and admits that some of the 
strong phrases of the Calvinistic standards may, on a superficial 
view, be justly liable to the charge of teaching fatality, and, for 
defending them from the charge of fatality, proposes an illogical 
and novel device. " Does not the pronounced imputation of 
guilt," he asks, " in these reformed standards preclude the 
charge of Manichseism, since human nature is no longer essen- 
tially a mass of corruption and perdition, but only impzcta- 
tivelyf " But this expedient for getting rid of the " utterly in- 
disposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly 
inclined to all evil" (which Calvinism not only declares to be 
man's state, but to render him utterly incapable of freedom 
toward good until unconditionally regenerated by divine influ- 
ence), is inadequate, for it ignores the obvious fact that cor- 
ruption is not " imputed," and in the nature of the case can not 
be. Guilt can be imputed. The Westminster Confession 
rightly says that " death in sin and corrupted nature " the first 
parents u conveyed to all their posterity." Neither personal guilt 
nor imputed guilt necessarily impairs the freedom of the will. 

"Among the Arminians or Remonstrants," says Mr. Miller, 
" the tenet of the universality of redemption is held side by side 
with that of the human will to co-operate with divine grace, 
both positions being firmly taken by distinguished Anglicans 
like Jeremy Taylor and Isaac Barrow. Richard Baxter himself, 
strict Puritan in other respects, has strong leanings this way." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 267 

On this broad, solid, and, as we must believe it, scriptural 
'" medium ground " in theology, in company with Taylor and 
Barrow and Baxter, of England, stand Donnell and Bird and 
Beard and other men of cherished memory in the Cumberland 
Presbyterian Church. 

We have dwelt upon the subject of man's present moral and 
spiritual state as affected by the original transgression, not only 
because it is a subject of interest and of vital relations in a 
theological system, but also because much of the public teaching 
on the subject is not accordant with human experience and is, 
therefore, unsatisfying to the minds of the thoughtful. No 
other than a rational theology can be a true theology, for all 
truth is harmonious.* 

We will be greatly helped in our endeavor for clear and satis- 
fying views on this subject if we keep in mind two obvious facts : 

1. Man is subject to much evil that is in no proper sense a 
direct result of sin. To suppose that all evil or suffering im- 
plies sin as its cause, is an old, old error. " Who did sin, this 

* We can not overestimate the value of the declaration of Mark Hopkins, 
that " Nothing that can be shown to be really in opposition either to the 
reason or the moral nature of man can be from God." And so, as he 
further asserts : " If Christianity be not fundamentally in accord with our 
original constitution, and will not restore man to a true manhood, and the 
highest manhood, we can not accept it." 

In the following paragraph we must recognize not only a just distinc- 
tion made between the relation of Adam and that of his posterity, to 
temporal death, but also a just and needful warning as to the pernicious 
effects of propagating theological dogmas at war with man's reason, or 
those moral ideas fundamental to the conception of moral government : 
"All the criminality belongs to Adam, and we are no more guilty of his 
sin," says Frame, " than Christ was guilty of ours. Temporal death was 
punishment to Adam, but it is only suffering to his posterity. No wonder 
that infidelity abounds, when the professed defenders of the Faith main- 
tain that we are guilty of Adam's sin. There is no intelligent man, 
with an unbiased mind, who will believe that he is guilty of a sin 
committed by another, and that, too, thousands of years before he was 
born. It is this and similar absurdities that have driven so many of 
our intelligent and inquiring young men into the ranks of a hopeless 
infidelity." 



268 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

man, or his parents, that he was born blind ? " " Neither," said 
the Master. Yet it is true that much of the evil in the world is 
directly or indirectly the result of sin. Says Mark Hopkins, 
than whom our century has not had a clearer or profounder 
thinker on man's moral nature and relations, " Evil from acci- 
dent, or misfortune, or from the laws of nature as regarded 
impersonal, is not punishment." Many good people are sorely 
perplexed in their faith simply because they refer toa" myste- 
rious providence of God" sufferings that arise from their own 
mistakes, from the wills of other people, or otherwise are inci- 
dent to the state of things of which man, a finite and fallible 
creature, is a part. 

2. Humanity, in this earthly state, is a great rational, moral, 
sentient economy in which the well-being of each is largely 
dependent on the will and behavior of others. In the nature of 
the case, which we must regard of divine ordaining, this princi- 
ple of interdependence and representation is of the widest 
prevalence, and we are constrained to believe that it is not 
limited to the sentient creatures of this little sphere. In the 
case of husband and wife, parents and children, ruler and sub- 
jects, we see the operation of this principle under relations 
which make the well-being of some necessarily and very largely 
dependent on the knowledge and virtue of others ; but nowhere 
do we see the operation of that principle which is involved 
in what speculative theologians have attempted to fasten 
upon the teachings of God's word under the name of " imputa- 
tion" 

Holding firmly, then, by the plain teaching of God's word, 
that "by one man sin entered the world;" and that from the 
original transgressor corruption of moral faculties passed to his 
posterity ; and that death came by sin, since, because of inher- 
ited depravity, "all have sinned," and so death passed to all 
men; and since man in this fallen condition is under mora! 
weakness because of depravity, and under just condemnation 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 269 

for actual sin, we are led to consider the divine and merciful pro- 
vision for man's restoration through 

5. A covenant of grace. 

" Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by 
that covenant (of works), the Lord was pleased to make the 
second, commonly called the covenant of grace, wherein he 
freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, 
requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved." (Con- 
fession, section 23.) 

A covenant implies, (1) parties, (2) promise, (3) conditions, (4) 
penalty. Man was originally a party to what is usually called 
the " covenant of works," God being the other party. God 
promised the reward of life, on condition of obedience, and fixed 
the penalty of disobedience. This covenant is styled also the 
" covenant of life," as it promised life, and the " legal covenant," 
because the condition was obedience to law. 

But the first parents failed to obtain life and blessedness under 
the first covenant, and involved themselves in guilt which justly 
exposed them to penal sufferings while they also rendered the 
race subject to physical death, and involved them in moral 
depravity which rendered spiritual life and blessedness morally 
impossible. Man's dire necessity is God's stupendous opportu- 
nity to demonstrate, not to man only, but, in providing deliver- 
ance for man, to show to all his universe of moral subjects, that 
he is gracious and merciful, not willing the death of his rational 
creatures, and capable, in his infinite wisdom, of so providing 
for the redemption of man, as to more than secure all the moral 
ends which demanded the death of the transgressor. 

Here we reach another of the vital points wherein Cumber- 
land Presbyterian doctrine differs materially from Westminster 
theology. The latter system teaches, according to Hodge's 
Commentary on the Confession, " that God having determined to 
save the elect out of the mass of the race fallen in Adam, 
appointed his Son to become incarnate in our nature, and as the 



270 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Christ or God-man Mediator, he appointed him to be the second 
Adam and representative head of redeemed humanity, and as 
such entered into a covenant with him and with his seed in him. 
In this covenant the Mediator assumes in behalf of his elect seed 
the broken conditions of the old covenant of works precisely as 
Adam left them. Adam had failed to obey, and therefore for- 
feited life ; he had sinned, and therefore incurred the endless 
penalty of death. Christ therefore suffered the penalty and 
extinguished in behalf of all whom he represented the claims of the 
old covenant, and at the same time he rendered a perfect vicari- 
ous obedience, which was the very condition upon which eternal 
life had been originally offered. All this Christ does as a prin- 
cipal party with God to the covenant in acting as the representa- 
tive of his own people." 

We have indicated by italics the more prominent parts of the 
foregoing which contrast Westminster theology with that of our 
own Church. The following paragraph from Hodge's Commen- 
tary contains language that is certainly remarkable, and such 
as we must think scarcely any believer in the God of the Bible 
could use unless in extenuation of a theory abhorrent to reason r 

" Subsequently, in the administration and gracious application 
of this covenant, Christ the Mediator offers the blessings secured 
by it to all men on condition of faith — that is, he bids all men to 
lay hold of these blessings by the instrumentality of faith, and 
he promises that if they do so they shall certainly enjoy them ; 
and he, as the mediatorial surety of his people, insures for them 
that their faith and obedience shall not fail." 

" The Calvinistic view," as Dr. Hodge designates it, and as he 
has briefly sketched it for us, teaches : (1) that God " determined 
to save the elect out of the race fallen in Adam ; (2) that he 
appointed his incarnate Son to be the second Adam and repre- 
sentative head of redeemed humanity " (the elect) ; (3) that " the 
Mediator assumes in behalf of his elect seed the broken condi- 
tions of the old covenant of works," and so " suffered the 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 



271 



penalty and extinguished in behalf of all he represented the 
claims of the old covenant," and "rendered (for the elect) a per- 
fect vicarious obedience," or fulfilled " the very condition upon 
which eternal life had been originally offered; " (4) that the rest 
of mankind were passed by, as not being elect, and were not 
included in those for whom Christ covenanted, suffered, and 
obeyed ; (5) that, consequently, all the guilt of Adam's sin, as 
imputed to them, and of their personal transgressions remains 
against the non-elect, without any propitiation whereby it would 
be possible for these sins to be forgiven or for the non-elect to 
be saved ; and yet, (6) in the administration and gracious appli- 
cation of this covenant Christ the Mediator " offers the blessings 
(secured by the covenant) to all men on condition of faith ! " 

Christ " offers " the non-elect the blessings of the covenant of 
grace, says Dr. Hodge. What does Dr. Hodge mean, what can 
he mean by his emphasized "offers" them the blessings of the 
covenant, save that it is an offer without any thing offered ? Is 
Christ chargeable with such mockery ? Having unconditionally 
excluded a portion of the human race from the covenant, and 
left them without power to repent or believe, Christ now, 
according to this Calvinistic theology, " bids all men to lay hold 
of these blessings " by faith. That is to say that Christ, denying 
to a portion of humanity the power to believe, bids them believe 
and so " lay hold on " blessings neither provided nor designed 
for them! If this is Calvinism, as one of its eminent ex- 
pounders states, can we wonder, that, as Rev. John Miller 
declares, Calvinism has successively died in seven of its great 
doctrinal centers ? — We notice finally : 

6. The fullness and universality of the covena?it of grace under 
the New Testament dispensation. 

The administration of the scheme of redemption has been a 
progress at once grand and wonderful. Is it possible for the 
student of history to believe that no other will and no other 
power than man's has guided and effected the long series of 



272 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

events which culminated in the dissolution and removal of the 
Judaic state, and the ushering in of this simpler, fuller, and 
universal dispensation of what is called the gospel? The race 
has no better, no higher hope than this gospel of love. In the 
moral sky there is no Sun of Righteousness but the center of this 
gospel administration. This is " the dispensation of the fullness 
of times," in which believers of all nations are to be gathered 
into one brotherhood of peace and good will, that these and the 
family of God in heaven may be united under Christ, to reign 
with him in the new heavens and new earth wherein only the 
righteous shall dwell. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 273 



CHAPTER IX. 

FREE WILL — THE MORAI< LAW — MORAL GOVERNMENT — MAN'S 
FREEDOM CONSISTENT WITH GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY. 

" 34. God, in creating man in his own likeness, endued him with intelli- 
gence, sensibility, and will, which form the basis of moral character, and 
render man capable of moral government. 

"35. The freedom of the will is a fact of human consciousness, and is 
the sole ground of accountability, Man, in his state of innocence, was 
both free and able to keep the divine law, also to violate. Without any 
constraint from either physical or moral causes, he did violate it. 

" 36. Man, by disobedience, lost his innocence, forfeited the favor of 
God, became corrupt in heart and inclined to evil. In this state of spirit- 
ual death and condemnation, man is still free and responsible ; yet, with- 
out the illuminating influence of the Holy Spirit, he is unable either to 
keep the law or lay hold upon the hope set before him in the gospel. 

" 37- When the sinner is born of God, he loves him supremely, and 
steadfastly purposes to do his will ; yet because of remaining corruption, 
and of his imperfect knowledge of moral and spiritual things, he often 
wills what in itself is sinful. This imperfect knowledge and corruption 
remain, in greater or less force, during the present life ; hence the con- 
flict between the flesh and the spirit." — Confession of Faith. 

" There is nothing good or evil, save in the will"'' — Epictetus. 

" To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible." — 
Froude. 

I. Freedom of the Will. 
ALIKE in their pulpit ministrations and in their doctrinal 
^"^ discussions, Cumberland Presbyterians have plainly taught 
and strenuously insisted on the freedom of the human will. In 
their theological system, freedom is a basic and essential truth. 
Freedom denied, human conduct is divested of every trace of a 
moral phase, and the term virtue can stand for no such reality 
as the common sense of mankind attaches to it. " I do not per- 



274 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

form an act," says Le Devoir, "I do not pronounce a word, 
which does not suppose a belief in my liberty and in that of 

others Deny the belief in liberty, and society falls to 

pieces." With the ancient philosopher whose sentiment we 
have cited above, and with Mr. Froude, Mark Hopkins tells us 
that " all virtue is from the will, as all knowledge is from the 
intellect." To these opinions of profound thinkers we must add 
the common judgment of mankind, of which a judicious writer 
observes that " a fact so universal has many chances of being in 
conformity with reality." 

It is well known, however, that the denial of the freedom of 
the will, in one form or another, and by positive assertion or 
logical inference, has found place alike in religious creeds and 
philosophical systems. Fatality, necessity, determinism, or 
the denial of freedom, by whatever name, has been also a favor- 
ite refuge of atheists and infidels. Of the atheist of his day, 
Jeremy Collier says : " If you will take his word for it, an athe- 
ist is a very despicable mortal, .... no better than a heap of 
organized dust, a stalking machine, a speaking head without a 

soul in it He has no more liberty than the current of a 

stream or the blast of a tempest ; and where there is no choice 
there can be no merit." 

Greek and Roman philosophy had its " destiny " (fatum) 
whereby the events of every human life evolved along a course 
irreversibly predetermined. Pantheism and Mohammedanism 
alike bind man's action by a power that excludes the idea of 
freedom. The materialist tells us that volitions only seemingly 
proceed from free will, while they are simply necessary move- 
ments dependent on states of the brain, which states are in turn 
dependent on influences external to the body. The evolutionist 
will have it that man is " the resultant of his ancestors," and that 
so his will is but the effect of many and long continued causes, in 
the grasp of which causes it is " tied to its course by a law of nature, 
as a planet to its orbit or a plant to the soil on which it grows." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 275 

Of the old idea of "destiny," a recent vigorous thinker on 
psychological subjects says, " Even in the Christian religion 
there remain some traces of this conception of destiny, pre- 
sented, it is true, under the feature of a personal God, the 

absolute master of all the events of the world In some 

Christian sects, belief in predestination has become a dogma; " 
and by predestination is meant, the author quoted tells us, a 
" purpose formed by God from all eternity to cast away certain 
men and to save others." Similarly, as the same author hints, 
the idea of " grace," in the sense of divine assistance needful to 
the accomplishment of good and the sanctification of the soul, 
granted to some and refused to others, " has direct relations 
with fatalism." 

Against this theological dogma, whether the fatality implied 
is made to depend on an eternal predestination of every individ- 
ual of the race to a specific doom from which escape is impos- 
sible, or upon a limited atonement, or upon the denial of the 
grace without which salvation is impossible, Cumberland Pres- 
byterians protest/as they do also against all theological premises 
which by logical inference lead to such a dogma. The men 
who were instrumental in organizing the Church accepted the 
Westminster Confession of Faith as a doctrinal standard " so far 
as they believed it consistent with the word of God," meaning 
thereby that they excepted the doctrine of fatality. 

The fact of the freedom of man in willing is assured to him 
through consciousness. Not only is he conscious of putting 
forth volition, but conscious of doing it freely, and conscious of 
power to refrain from the choice made. Free will is man's 
power, as Condillac well said, " of doing what he does not do, 
and of not doing what he does do." He who does not reverence 
the name of God has power to do so ; and he who desecrates 
the Sabbath and deals fraudulently has power not to do these 
things. Nothing short of this idea of moral freedom can afford 
any basis for merit, responsibility, or rewards and penalties. 



276 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

To say that man wills freely what he does will, but could not 
will otherwise than what he does will, is to give him only the 
freedom of the water in the flowing stream. 

Further, it is Cumberland Presbyterian doctrine that while 
through disobedience man became " corrupt in heart and 
inclined to evil," yet is man not by this depravity under a 
fatal necessity of sinning, but is " still free and responsible by 
virtue of the gracious influences of the Holy Spirit." God wills 
not the death of any, and as he " commands all men everywhere 
to repent," we must believe that men are capable of the repent- 
ance required of them. The wrath of God is not manifested 
against the ungodly because of an unconditioned appointment 
of them to wrath, on God's part, nor because of any fatal impo- 
tency of will in them, but " because knowing God they glorified 
him not as God, nor gave thanks ; but became vain in their rea- 
sonings, and their foolish heart was darkened." 

Cumberland Presbyterians not only preach a gospel designed 
for all men, but believe that they preach to men who have the 
power to accept this gospel b}^ exercise of the ability that is in 
them to will to turn away from sin, to accept Christ as their 
Savior, and to keep the commandments of God. This view of 
the gospel and of man's ability, under the dispensation of the 
Spirit, to accept the gospel, should be constantly pressed upon 
the sinner's attention. " Fallen man can," says Rev. Robert 
Donnell, " upon the gospel plan choose life or death, blessing or 
cursing. This is abundantly evident from the word of God: 
* Choose ye this day whom ye will serve ' (Josh. xxiv. 15) ; 'Ye 
will not come unto me that ye might have life ' (John v. 40) ; 
' Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely ' (Rev. 
xxii. 17)." 

It is true, as the Confession asserts, that " when the sinner is 
born of God he loves him supremely, and steadfastly purposes 
to do his will ; " but it is not to be inferred that Cumberland 
Presbyterians teach, therefore, that until one is born again he 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 277 

can put forth no effort to comply with the terms of the gospel. 
To those yet unconverted, the exhortation is, " Choose ye this 
day whom ye will serve." Of men who were not yet "born 
again " the Master said, when commanding the eleven to go into 
all the world and preach his gospel, " he that believeth and is 
baptized shall be saved." Man must choose the service of God — 
must choose salvation as offered in Christ, and not passively wait 
to be " born again " in order to be able to choose. 

The doctrine of " irresistible grace," the doctrine of an " effec- 
tual call," in the sense that some receive such, and others 
receive only " common " or necessarily ineffectual " operations 
of grace," and the doctrine that man is passive until born again, 
as to the matter of personal salvation, are errors which have 
wrecked multitudes of souls, and errors against which the ear- 
lier Cumberland Presbyterian ministers frequently protested 
with great earnestness and power of logic. 

Cumberland Presbyterian theology, with its fundamental 
premises of the impartial goodness of God, a general atonement, 
the offer of life to all men, the general operation of the Spirit 
through which man is enabled to repent and believe, and the 
freedom of the will, is a theology of common sense, conformable, 
on the subjective side, to the normal conscious experiences of 
the soul, and opposed to fatality and every species of religious 
mysticism. 

It is scarcely possible for us to overestimate the importance 
of correct views of the freedom of the will as a co-ordinating 
principle in a rational system of theology and of religion. 
Equally important is it in its relations to religious experience 
and practical godliness. It is choosing to repent of and forsake 
sin, choosing the salvation offered in Christ, choosing to accept 
the commandments of Christ as the rule of life, choosing to con- 
secrate himself to God's service and human welfare, that makes 
a man a Christian ; and it is choosing to continue steadfast until 
death that causes his path to shine more and more unto the per- 



278 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

feet day, and crowns him with eternal life. And yet it is "all ofj 
grace" that he is called, that every one is called, thus to "seek 
after glory, honor, and immortality." " By faith Moses, when he 
was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's 
daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of 
God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, for he had 
respect to (looked to) the recompense of the reward." If much 
of the preaching of to-day does not lay too much stress on the 
idea of getting religion, it certainly does lay too little stress, the 
Bible being witness, on the idea of choosing religion, living 
religion, doing religion. 

Between the teachings of hyper-Calvinism and the phenom- 
ena of mind as attested in man's consciousness there is an irrec- 
oncileable antagonism. Calvinism sweeps away the principles 
that must underlie all just conceptions of moral government, 
utterly divesting man of that self-determination which is the 
sole faculty through the conscious exercise of which it is possible 
for him to give himself to God or to rebel against God's right- 
eous claims. Not the heathen philosophy which exalted " des- 
tiny " to the throne of the universe as a power swaying irresisti- 
bly the wills of gods as well as of men, nor the baldest material- 
ism of to-day, which regards matter as eternal and all phenom- 
ena, those of mind included, as but links in an endless chain of 
fatalistic causation, is more subversive of rational ideas of virtue 
and of moral government than is that theological system of 
necessity which the genius of Augustine and afterward that of 
Calvin attempted to fasten on the thought of the Christian 
world ; and in their efforts to aid the mind in emancipating itself 
from these shackles Cumberland Presbyterians have rendered 
useful service to the cause of evangelical truth. 

The professed belief; on the part of Calvinists, of what are 
irreconcileable contradictions is a puzzling psychological phe- 
nomenon. For instance, what more could an Arminian say than 
is said in this passage from a Calvinistic writer : " Let none pre- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 279 

sume ever to suppose that God can be wanting on his part, 
or to cast the blame of his own negligence and impenitence on 
the predestination of God. He will have all to be saved, and 
calls upon all men to come unto Jesus that they may have life ; 
and it were blasphemy to suppose that he offers for the accept- 
ance of his creatures a gift which he had causatively foreor- 
dained that they should be unable to receive. He is ever work- 
ing by his spirit for good — and for good only, and strives with 
every man until he, by his own obstinate resistance, has 
destroyed within himself the susceptibility of renewal and done 
despite to the Spirit of Grace." The same writer, amazing as 
the fact seems, still clings to his Calvinistic premises — the eter- 
nal unconditional decree of whatsoever conies to pass — that 
some of the human race are unconditionally chosen in Christ 
unto everlasting glory, and the rest of mankind passed by and 
doomed to wrath, for whom, according to Dr. Hodge, Christ did 
not assume " the broken conditions of the old covenant of works 
precisely as Adam left them," as he did for the " elect seed," 
and, worse still, if possible, the guilt of Adam's sin is imputed 
to those for whom Christ did not assume the conditions of the 
covenant broken by Adam, and this imputed sin of Adam is 
made " the cause of the loss of original righteousness and the 
acquisition of original sin." If for a sin committed by another, 
and unconditionally imputed to him by a Sovereign Will, a 
human being is unconditionally passed by and ordained to 
wrath, that human being is not a victim of fatality, we fail to 
conceive what is meant by fatality. 

Calvinistic "decrees" and '"predestination," of logical neces- 
sity, lead to the doctrine of fatality. The distinction between 
causative will and permissive will, says Dr. Forbes, " Calvin 
would not hear of." " Why do we say God permits''' asks Cal- 
vin, " but just because he wills? " 

" Calvin was afraid," says Dr. Forbes, " that if he conceded 
any originating power whatever to the creature's will the sover- 



280 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

eignty of God would thereby be infringed," and justly adds that 
" he (Calvin) does not see by the repulsive aspect he gives to this 
attribute in pressing it beyond its legitimate sphere, and by 
making the sovereignty of God override all his other attributes, 
he throws an obstacle in the way of the cordial acceptance of this 
most important and humbling, yet consolatory, truth." 

Only within the sphere of freedom — the power to choose the 
end for which he will live, and to subordinate ten thousand voli- 
tions to the realization of the generic choice, can responsibility 
attach to man. This sphere of freedom is the domain of moral 
law, of virtue, of moral government ; and we may proceed to 
notice how out of man's nature as a rational creature capable 
of happiness and suffering, and endowed with self-determining 
power, there issues what is at once the law of his constitution 
and the will of his Maker, namely, 

II. The Moral Law. 

When we assert that the moral law is but the law of man's 
constitution, it is meant that it is simply the rational way of 
acting for a being endowed with man's powers and susceptibili- 
ties, and existing for the end for which man is conceived to 
exist. Given, that end, and man's constitution, as endowed with 
intelligence, sensibility, and will, and reason affirms a law of 
action for man, and that law of action is the moral law. 

It is only in view of an " end " for which man is conceived to 
exist that a law of action can be predicated. Not only an end, 
but a highest end must be conceived as conditioning the idea of 
law for a being endowed with knowledge and freedom. As 
endowed with sensibility, man is capable of enjoyment, of hap- 
piness, of good, and of good that may come to him through 
numerous sources. But his constitution reveals a supreme 
good, a summum bonum. It is in view of ends, as higher or lower, 
which man apprehends, and from which he can freely choose for 
himself a supreme end of his life endeavors, that issue moral 






CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 28 1 

law, man's responsibility, and his approval or disapproval of 
self, in accordance with the choice made. At this point it is 
that destiny is in man's own hand. Whatsoever he soweth, that 
shall he reap. If he choose as an end the gratification of the 
flesh, or the acquisition of wealth, or worldly fame, he chooses 
unworthily, and not only misses the supreme good, but brings 
upon himself the retribution of his own outraged moral nature. 
" Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever." 
Whether we study man's faculties and susceptibilities, appeal 
to his experience, or accept the teaching of the Bible, the Cate- 
chism is found to harmonize with the profoundest philosophy as 
to man's well-being. Only when man seeks happiness through 
obedience to the will of his Maker does he find his true end, the 
highest good of which he is capable. 

Viewed only as proceeding from man's constitution, or as 
learned from his experience, moral law is but the rule by which 
man attains the highest good. "A law," says Mark Hopkins, 
" tells us what to do, and commands us to do it, but becomes 
law only as it is enforced by a penalty, or by punishment." 
Unless a law be " supposed to express the will of God with his 
authority lying back of it, it will be, as men now are, of small 
force for controlling the appetites and passions." 

The Creator, infinitely wise and good, not only made man for 
the happiness that comes through virtue, but wills that man 
shall attain this end ; and thus the law divinely impressed upon 
man's constitution is also the positively revealed will and com- 
mand of the Creator. God says to men through his inspired 
word, Thou shalt, and thou shalt not. Man is free to obey and 
to disobey. Yet a voice within him sa3^s, This you ought to do, 
that you ought not to do. So there is within man's breast that 
which makes him " a law unto himself" — that something which 
separates man from the brute by what one has called " the 
greatest difference in the universe " — that something within us, 
though no part of us, which the greatest of German philoso- 



282 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

phers declared equally wonderful with the starry heavens above 
us — the moral law. 

III. Moral Government. 

No man liveth unto himself only. Every individual is a 
member of a great social and moral economy. God's purpose in 
the creation of beings rational and sentient, is the diffusion of 
happiness through a vast moral economy. Every subject in this 
great economy is bound, not only to choose his own highest 
well-being, but with regard to the purpose of God that all shall 
attain their end, and, first of all, with respect to his obligations 
to his Maker. Not only in striving to realize the end for which 
he was made is man to glorify God and enjoy him, but he is 
under obligation to be a worker together with God in the pro- 
motion of the highest good of the whole moral economy. 
Within limits of their capacity to enable man to attain his end, 
both the family and the state are of divine appointment — powers 
" ordained of God " for human well-being. 

God, by creation and preservation, is the rightful King whose 
dominion rules over all. But over man and other subjects of 
moral law, he rules by a system of rewards and punishments. 
The fundamental law of his kingdom is, Thou shall love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself. 
" Love is the fulfilling of the law." And the " love " we are 
required to exercise toward the neighbor in kind and measure as 
toward self, consists in choosing and seeking for the neighbor the 
attainment of his end. The general prevalence of this law of 
God's kingdom in the hearts and lives of men would result in 
what one has rightly called " the highest earthfy conception " — 
a " vast Christian commonwealth instinct with order." 

The view we have taken of free will enables us to see how 
man can rationally yield himself to God through the exercise 
of that freedom, and the poet uttered a truth accordant with 
philosophy and religion in saying, " Our wills are ours, to make 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 283 

them thine; " for only through the will can man give himself or 
any thing else to God. But the power to give ourselves to God 
freely, is the power also to withhold ourselves from and to rebel 
against God. 

" If God would be a Father and a Moral Governor," says 
Mark Hopkins, " he must have children and subjects in his own 
image, and with the prerogative of choosing or rejecting him as 
their supreme good. Control by force, or by an impulse from 
without, is the opposite of control by love, and of order from a 
rational choice, and the highest duty of man is to give himself 
in the spirit of a child — that is, by faith, to God." 

It is because man has turned away from God, and seeks hap- 
piness through the choice of other than the right end, that the 
world is full of unrest, sorrow, and suffering. Such a choice is sin. 

In the light of the general principles we have thus attempted 
to make plain, it will not be difficult to understand how 

IV. God's Sovereignty and Man's Freedom 

harmonize in that moral government which God exercises over 
his creature man. 

True it is, indeed, that the profoundest thinkers have been 
perplexed over the problem we have here pronounced not diffi- 
cult to understand. Calvin solved the problem, as Dr. Forbes 
tells us, " by denying there is any to be solved " — " by eliminat- 
ing entirely the conflicting element on the opposite side of the 
question, and merging man's will wholly in God's will. The 
common sense of mankind has been in error in considering that 
man's will could originate any thing — even sin. God is the 
originator of all, even of sin." Such, a professed Calvinist 
being judge, is the conclusion Calvin deduced from his own 
premises. The ceaseless unrest of Westminster theology grows 
out of the fact that it accepts Calvin's premises with a " so as 
thereby " the conclusion does not follow — an attempt to disjoin 
ideas which are by logical necessity inseparable. 



284 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Calvinistic necessitarians charge the advocates of free-will 
with a denial of the scriptural doctrine that salvation is of 
grace ; but such a charge is unjust ; more still, if man be not 
free in the sense and measure we have supposed, then would it 
be impossible for salvation to be by grace, for grace is favor to 
the undeserving, but if not free, man is neither deserving nor 
undeserving. 

The all-wise Creator saw fit to bring into being a vast moral 
economy. It was his sovereign will to create such intelligences, 
and to govern them according to the nature he gave them. 
Here on the earth, as an actuality, we find such a moral 
economy, the subjects of which do, through civil government 
and in a thousand other ways, treat one another as endowed 
with freedom of will and action, and therefore as responsible. 

Had not an omnipotent Creator power to create such a being 
as we have supposed man to be? If in the exercise of his 
sovereignty he has created such a being, wherein is his sover- 
eignty denied ? If when in rebellion and deserving only the 
divine displeasure man is saved by divine interposition, how is 
" grace " denied as being the procuring cause of salvation ? It 
is not denied. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 285 



CHAPTER X. 

REDEMPTION IN RELATION TO THE HEATHEN AND THOSE 
INCAPABLE OP PAITH. 

" There is a wideness in God's mercy, 

Like the wideness of the sea ; 
There 's a kindness in his justice 

"Which is more than liberty ; 
For the love of God is broader 

Than the measure of man's mind; 
And the heart of the Eternal 

Is most wonderfully kind." — Faber. 

'T^HE subject of the last preceding chapter leads us, by obvi- 
ous connection, to inquire whether salvation is possible to 
those who live and die without knowledge of Christ's atoning 
work, and, if it is possible, on what conditions. It is matter for 
regret that the discussion of a question of so much interest 
must, by the limits prescribed for this volume, be restricted to a 
few pages. A brief summary of the great doctrines of redemp- 
tion will suitably bring the question before us : 

1. In the exercise of freedom of will, which " is the sole 
ground of accountability," man brought sin into the world, and 
death by sin. 

2. "Jesus Christ, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of 
himself, became the propitiation for the sins of the whole 
w r orld." 

3. That the legal aspect of this merciful provision, which 
sprang wholly from God's sovereign grace, is comprised in the 
fact that all the benign ends of God's moral government that 
could have been attained by the punishment of the transgressor, 



286 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

can be attained through the sufferings and death of Christ as 
displaying God's disapprobation of sin and his supreme regard 
for holiness and for the happiness of his creatures. 

4. Atonement takes away no one's sins except in the sense, 
(1) that God can justly and does forgive the sins of those who 
repent of sin, and choose obedience, and (2) that it provides the 
gracious influences whereby the sinner may experience moral 
and spiritual regeneration, if he submit himself to those influ- 
ences. Pardon, justification, salvation, or the blessings which 
come to man through Christ, by whatever word expressed, must 
mean, in a general sense, (1) deliverance from the penal conse- 
quences of sin, by pardon, made morally possible through 
atonement, and (2) restoration to holiness and, thereby, to bless- 
edness. 

5. Christ's atoning work is for humanity, lifting the race into 
a new and gracious probation, and, as the Bible certainly 
teaches, thus secures to every human being the possibibility of 
attaining that spiritual blessedness in which consists the 
supreme good for which man was made. 

In the application of these doctrines to the problem of actual 
salvation, we distinguish three classes : 

(a) Those who, by early death or by natural impotence of 
mental faculties, in this life know nothing of Christ. Of this 
class Cumberland Presbyterians say, "All infants dying in 
infancy, and all persons who have never had the faculty of 
reason, are regenerated and saved." 

Knapp is certainly incorrect when he declares that " none, 
have really ever doubted the salvation of those dying in infan- 
cy ; " for the damnation of some of this class is an unavoidable 
inference of the doctrine of unconditional election and reproba- 
tion — of what a Presbyterian judicature lately stigmatized as 
" the horrible doctrine of preterition" While our Confession 
teaches that all dying in infancy are " regenerated and saved,'* 
the Westminster doctrine, consistently with its dogma of uncon- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 287 

ditional decrees, is that "elect infants" dying in infancy are 
saved. 

(b) Those to whom, the gospel is offered. 

(c) That large class — as yet by far the larger part of our com- 
mon humanity — who have lived to years of moral accountabil- 
ity, and passed from this probationary stage, without knowledge 
that Christ tasted death for them. 

A consistent Calvinist holds, as Dr. Briggs admits, that this 
life is not in any proper sense a state of probation, since, 
according to Calvinistic doctrine, by eternal decree of election 
or preterition every man's destiny is determined before he is 
born. Cumberland Presbyterian doctrine makes the blessings 
of the gospel available to all humanity — wide as the curse is the 
offer of the remedy. 

Whatever may be the extent of the knowledge of duty to 
which man may attain without the light of revelation, the 
Scriptures clearly teach that only for the right use of what he 
hath shall man give account. Peter never opened his mouth to 
more reasonable utterance than when, in audience of those 
present " to hear all things commanded of the Lord," he said 
(Acts x. 35) : " Of a truth I perceive that God is not a respecter 
of persons ; but in every nation he that fears him, and works 
righteousness, is accepted of him." 

So Paul declares, that there is no respect of persons with 
God," asserting — 

" For whenever the Gentiles who have not the law 
Do by nature the things of the law, 
These, having not the law, are a law unto themselves ; 
Who show the work of the law written in their hearts, 
Their conscience also bearing witness, 
And their thoughts meanwhile accusing or excusing one 
another." 
And so, speaking of the light of nature as the source of a 
knowledge of God and of duty, he declares : " For, from the 



288 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

creation of the world, his invisible things are clearly seen, being 
perceived by the things that are made, even his eternal power 
and Godhead; so that they are without excuse." And so, as 
justifying God's displeasure at the wickedness of heathendom, 
Paul says of such sinners, " Who, knowing the judgment of God, 
that they who do such things are worthy of death, not only do 
them, but have pleasure in those who do them." 

There can be no question as to the fact that the heathen world 
lieth in abominable idolatries and other wickedness — and that 
it is a just reproach to Christianity that it has not caused all the 
world to hear the glad tidings designed for all ears — yet it is 
true that even in heathen lands there have been illustrious 
examples of lives noble and virtuous, and of moral and religious 
teaching very like to portions of the inspired word. St. Clem- 
ent says : " Let us look steadfastly upon the blood of Christ, 
and see how precious his blood is in the sight of God, because, 
being poured out in behalf of our salvation, it has procured for 
the whole world the gift of repentance." In like manner is 
Christ declared " the true Light which lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world." The prophet Haggai announced the 
coming Messiah as " the Desire of all nations." That the early 
teachers of Christianity understood that present good and the 
possibility of salvation and eternal blessedness came through 
Christ to the whole human race, " even as from Adam maledic- 
tion came upon all," the following passage from Irenaeus is 
proof: " For it was not merely for those who believed on him in 
the time of Tiberius Csesar that Christ came, nor did the Father 
exercise his providence only for men who are now alive, but for 
all men, who from the beginning, according to their capacity, 
have in their generation feared and loved God, and practiced 
justice and piety toward their neighbors, and have earnestly 
desired to see Christ and to hear his voice." 

Whether the good exhibited in the lives of men not under the 
influence of the published gospel is due simply to the natural 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 289 

powers of the human soul, as the vestiges of the moral likeness 
broken by the fall, or to be ascribed to gracious influences com- 
ing upon man through Christ's assumption of humanity in his 
incarnation is an old controversy upon the consideration of 
which we need not enter, it being sufficient for our purpose to 
say that the latter view is the one sanctioned by such passages 
as the following : 

" God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, 
but that the world through him might be saved." Certainly it 
is possible for the world to be saved. 

" I exhort, therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, 
intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men — for 
kings and all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and 
peaceable life in all godliness and decorum ; for this is good and 
acceptable in the sight of our Savior God, who desires that all 
should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." It 
must mean that salvation is possible to all, and that all are open 
to the influences of prayer. 

"As the Eternal Son became our Redeemer, Mediator, and 
effectual Intercessor, so," says a most thoughtful writer, " to 
complete the work which he began, to make effectual for our 
salvation his sacrifice, mediation, and intercession, the Holy 
Ghost was sent to dwell in the hearts of men ; to be the agent 
of reunion between God and man ; to be the source and begin- 
ning of that ?iew life, from which comes the capacity of holiness, 
the power to know and to love God, and to obey and love his com- 
mands." 

In every human life there is that experienced conflict between 
good and evil, between the flesh and the Spirit, which led a 
heathen philosopher to declare that he was possessed of two 
souls arrayed against each other. It is in the power of man, 
raised to a new probation in Christ, to follow the promptings of 
the Spirit ; and in his power to resist the Spirit, to live in the 
"flesh;" and which he chooses determines his destiny. "The 
19 



290 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

gospel tells us whence that goodness proceeds," says the writer 
above quoted, "which we find everywhere to co-exist with the 
evil in the heart of man," adding in another connection, " the 
scriptural testimony to this great fact of the indwelling of the 
Spirit in the hearts of all men in all ages, is emphatic and con- 
clusive." St. Paul affirms that "the manifestation of the Spirit 
is given to every man to profit withal." 

Of high ideals of virtue in the lives and the teachings of men 
who had not the gospel, many illustrations could be given, but 
the following must suffice : 

On the examination of conscience Seneca gives this admirable 
advice : " We should every day call our conscience to account. 
Thus did Sextius. When his daily work was done he questioned 
his soul, Of what defect hast thou cured thyself to-day ? What 
passion hast thou combated ? In what hast thou become better ? 
What more beautiful than this habit of going thus over the 
whole day ? .... I do the same, and, being thus my own judge, 
I call myself thus before my own tribunal. When the light has 
been carried from my room, I begin an inquest of the whole 
day ; I examine all my actions and words. And why should I 
hesitate to look at any of my faults when I can say to myself: 
Take care not to do so again — for to-day I forgive thee?" 

How many professed Christians there are — how many minis- 
ters, perchance — who could learn from Seneca, and profit by his 
example ! Yet Seneca lived in a time of abounding wickedness 
and fell a victim to the malice of Nero (A.D. 65), observing, 
when the sentence came, " I might have long expected such a 
mandate from a man who had murdered his own mother and 
assassinated all his friends." 

Equally remarkable, and of a more religious character, are 
these words of Kpictetus, a Greek moralist of whom a contem- 
porary said, " I thank the gods for Kpictetus, from whose writ- 
ings I can collect wherewith to conduct life with honor to 
myself and advantage to my country: " "If we had an under- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 29 1 

standing, ought we not," says Epictetus, "both in public and in 
private, incessantly to sing and praise the Deity, and rehearse 
his benefits ? Ought we not, whether we dig, or plow, or eat, to 
sing this hymn to God ? Great is God who has supplied us with 
these instruments to till the ground; great is God, who has 
given us hands and organs of digestion ; who has given us to 
grow insensibly, and to breathe in sleep. These things we ought 
forever to celebrate, and to make it the theme of the greatest 
and divinest hymn, that he has given us the power to appreciate 
these gifts, and to use them well. Were I a nightingale, I would 
act the part of a nightingale ; were I a swan, the part of a swan. 
But since I am a reasonable creature, it is my duty to praise God. 
This is my business, .... and I call on you to join in the same 
song." 

Not a few Christian scholars have believed some of the great 
moralists of the heathen world to have been inspired. Of Soc- 
rates, Plato, and Sakyo Mouni, Farrar says (in his Early Days 
of Christianity), " These, too, were enabled to shed some light 
on the problems of sin and sorrow, because they had kindled 
their torches at the Sun of Righteousness," and adds that, " in 
the deliverance of the one great revelation, even the heathen 
have borne their share." The "Apologists of the second cent- 
ury, and the philosophic Greek Christians of the third, never 
hesitated," he further alleges, " to recognize the truth that the 
influences of the Holy Spirit are as the wind which bloweth 
where it listeth, and that the poets and the philosophers of the 
heathen are often the conscious and the unconscious exponents 
of his inward voice." But it is not to be overlooked that Chris- 
tianity appeared at a time when the world's moral sky was one 
of almost unbroken gloom, a star like Seneca appearing only 
here and there, and that Stoicism, the best philosophy heathen- 
dom had produced, " amid the terrors and temptations of that 
awful epoch utterly failed to provide a remedy against the 
universal degradation." 



292 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Account for the fact as we may, it is of vast significance in 
this connection, that coextensive with man's conscious sense of 
moral unworthiness, which seems world-wide, there is a belief 
that the favor of God is dependent on sacrifice. Symington, in 
his work on Atonement, says that " every such sacrifice may be 
regarded as pointing directly to the one perfect sacrifice of the 
Son of God." Further, as the same able writer adds, " every 
part of the Gentile world is familiar with the idea of substitu- 
tion, and the very terms which this principle suggests the use 
of, are found in almost every language on earth." 

These views of the relation of Christ's atoning work, and of 
the accompanying influences of the Spirit, to humanity as a 
whole, have direct bearing on the obligation and the encourage- 
ment of those who now have the gospel to endeavor to give it 
to the yet less favored portion of the race, which, through the 
quickening influence of the Spirit, is endued with power to 
believe on him of whom it waits to hear, who tasted death for 
every man. Through this one sense of need, this one atoning 
sacrifice for all, this one quickening Spirit striving with all, all 
willing subjects receive power to become sons of God and heirs 
of everlasting blessedness. 

One of the ablest Christian thinkers and writers of the 
century declares that modern skepticism is a natural result of 
the narrowness of the popular theology. We come to the close 
of this cursory view of some of the leading doctrines of the 
gospel with a like belief ; and likewise with a profound convic- 
tion of the substantial correctness, and, therefore, of the 
immense value of the rational statement of scriptural doctrine, 
contained in the plain and brief Confession of Faith of the 
Cumberland Presbyterian Church. To so interpret Christianity 
as to make it discordant with reason, with man's consciousness, 
or with the obvious facts of human experience ; to make the 
issue of the gospel depend on an unconditional decree of God 
which, out of the same humanity, elects some to salvation and 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 293 

passes by and ordains others to wrath ; to make the remission 
of sins dependent on the prayers and intercessions of priest or 
pope, or the blessings of salvation dependent on any baptism or 
other outward form, is to offer a Christianity from which the 
growing intelligence of the times will revolt. Never before did 
more solemn obligation rest on the ministry and all other relig- 
ious teachers, to speak the things which become sound doc- 
trine, even the faith once delivered to the saints, for 
thereon depend the power and destiny of the Church of the 
living God, itself the pillar and ground of the truth. 



294 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



CHAPTER XL 

SIN — ATONEMENT — PARDON — RESTORATION. 

" 27. Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, was verily appointed 
before the foundation of the world to be the Mediator between God and 
man, the Prophet, Priest, and King, the heir of all things, the propitia- 
tion for the sins of all mankind, the Head of his Church, the Judge of 
the world, and the Savior of all true believers. 

" 28. The Son of 'God, the second person in the Trinity, did, when the 
fullness of time was come, take upon himself man's nature, yet without 
sin, being very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator 
between God and man. 

" 31. Jesus Christ, by his perfect obedience -and sacrifice of himself, 
which he, through the Eternal Spirit, once offered unto God, became the 
propitiation for the sins of the whole world, so God can be just in justi- 
fying all who believe in Jesus, 

" 33* Jesus Christ tasted death for every man, and now makes interces- 
sion for transgressors, by virtue of which the Holy Spirit is given to 
convince of sin and enable man to believe and obey, governing the hearts 
of believers by his word and Spirit, overcoming all their enemies by his 
almighty power and wisdom, in such manner and ways as are most con- 
sonant to his wonderful and unsearchable dispensation." — Confession of 
Faith. 

"God, out of his mere good pleasure, did provide salvation for all 
mankind." — Catechism, Ans. to Ques. 22. 

" And he is a propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only, but also 
for the whole world." — 1 John ii. 2. 

" For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life."— John iii. 16. 

"When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, .... 
to redeem them that were under the law." — Gal. iv. 4, 5. 

^HpHE section of the Confession on Christ the Mediator is 

clear, full, and, as it seems to us, thoroughly scriptural. 

Any thing like a complete development of its teachings would 

far transcend the limits that must be observed in this chapter. 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 295 

Only a few leading points can be brought under consideration, 
and these will be more clearly seen in their logical relations if 
we make brief reference to truths set forth in the last chapter. 

We have seen that man, endowed with intelligence, sensi- 
bility, and will, is by his constitution a subject of moral law. 
Capable of good as a sentient creature, and possessed of con- 
scious self-determining power, with ability to see the results of 
his behavior in their relation to his own and other's well-being, 
man is a person, a self-conscious rational ego, intrusted with, 
and responsible for, the destiny of the spiritual selfhood, which 
has capacity for sharing the bliss of heaven, and of suffering the 
torments of the lost. Moreover, the law which issues from his 
moral nature his Creator proclaims by revelation, Thou shall 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, a?id thy neighbor as thy- 
self, and thus man finds himself a subject of a moral govern- 
ment whose Head has a right to command the homage and 
obedience of all creatures, and will, as wise and good, reward 
the obedient and punish the disobedient. 

Taught to believe that man was made in the " image of God," 
we find his actual state one of rebellion against his God. 
Instead of loving, he hates, defrauds, kills his neighbor. In- 
stead of realizing his end, to glorify and enjoy God, man has 
altogether turned aside, and has utterly corrupted his way 
through willful and continued rebellion against the law of his 
own moral constitution and the proclaimed will of his Maker. 
Sin reigns unto universal moral corruption and condemnation. 

On the fact of sin, man's guilt and ruin, is conditioned the 
remedial system called the "gospel." God loved the world, 
and, " out of his mere good pleasure," of his infinite compas- 
sion, let us say— " did provide salvation for all mankind." This 
is the great event of time! The wonderful economy which 
prepared the way for the coming of the Redeemer looked for- 
ward to Calvary, and all subsequent time looks back to Calvary, 
for there was " lifted up " the God-man who is drawing the 



296 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

world unto himself. Though it may seem folly to the philoso- 
pher and still " scandal to the Jew," yet more and more is the 
world coming to receive this salvation that is through atone- 
ment, and to look upon it as the one event prophetic and pro- 
ductive of a grand issue, a divinely appointed issue, to which 
the moral creation moves. 

The Scriptures teach, not only that redemption comes to man 
through atonement, but that without atonement there could be 
no redemption ; and also that the death of Christ was for some 
reason, essential to atonement. " Christ died for the ungodly." 
Speaking of his death, Christ said, "I lay it (my life) down of 
myself." " Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on 
the tree." " Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for 
the unjust, that he might bring us to God." " Redeemed .... 
with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish 
and without spot." 

When it is asserted that on moral grounds a thing is necessary y 
it must be meant that it is necessary in view of some end. 
God's purpose to redeem man from sin and its consequences, as 
an end proposed, rendered an atonement necessary. In other 
language, divine justice, in view of the ends of the divine 
government, could redeem man only on condition of the substi- 
tution of something in the place of the death of the sinner that 
would equally well secure the ends of the divine government. 
The necessity, nature, and efficiency of the atonement can be 
understood only as viewed through man's moral condition as a 
transgressor of law, and as dead in sin. 

We may be sure that the well-being of God's rational 
creatures requires the punishment of sin, else sin would not be 
punished. " Punishment," says Mark Hopkins, " is the inflic- 
tion of a previously declared penalty by the will of the lawgiver 
for the sake of sustaining the authority of the law." " Obvi- 
ously, the penalty must express, and that only can," says. 
Hopkins, " the estimate by the lawgiver of his own rights, and 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 297 

of the rights of others that are in question, and also his benevo- 
lent desire to present the highest moral motives the case will admit 
to prevent the infraction of law." Right views in this connection 
are of the utmost importance, not only as to right theory of 
atonement, but in the matter of the soul's acquiescence in the 
wisdom and love of the God whose government over us appoints 
that the wages of sin is death. " The proper ground of punish- 
ment under any government is not the violation of obligation — 
that is, guilt as such," continues the same author, " but only the 
violation of obligation, as that violates rights .... In the 
divine government. . . . punishment is not in view of the guilt 
as such, but as it is guilt that violates the rights of others^ . . . 
and hence, even though guilt may have been incurred, if the 
rights of all be perfectly preserved and secure, punishment may 
be righteously omitted." 

In the light of these fundamental principles we may present a 
plain illustration of man's condition, of what an atonement does 
for him, and how it does it : The subject of a good king has 
committed a crime for which he has been sentenced to die, and, 
by persistent rebellion against righteous authority, has con- 
tracted such proneness to evil as makes it morally certain that 
were sentence not executed he would remain a wicked, unhappy 
rebel. Such is man's condition. He is under condemnation,- 
and moral depravity fills him with enmity to the law of right- 
eousness, to which his carnal mind is not subject and can not 
be. The subject of the king needs (1) pardon and (2) restora- 
tion to right voluntary attitude to his king and to righteous 
rule. And such are the needs of the sinner in view of his 
relation to God and God's law. Pardon, or the removal of the 
sentence, and restoration to holiness the sinner must have in 
order to salvation. The wise king will say that as he loves his 
subjects he must punish rebellion in order to preserve obedi- 
ence, harmony, and happiness. If it is not possible to substi- 
tute in the place of the death of the offender some expedient 



298 DOCT&INES AND GENIUS OF THE 

that will equally well secure the ends of righteous rule, the 
transgressor must (by moral necessity) suffer the penalty. 

If we are to regard atonement as a great verity in God's 
dealing with the human race, we certainly find in it the two 
elements of a moral condition rendering pardon safe, and such 
a reinforcement of the spiritual energies of the soul of man as 
puts pardon and renewal within his power through submission 
to God and the use of the gracious means supplied. What 
human governments may not be able to do, the wisdom and 
love of God fully accomplished in providing a ransom for those 
under just sentence of condemnation. Nay, more, we may 
suppose that the sufferings and death of Christ will do more to 
promote holiness and happiness throughout Jehovah's vast 
moral empire — for we can not affirm that the knowledge and 
influence of Christ's work are limited to mankind — than the 
everlasting punishment of the millions of the redeemed would 
have done. The " advent " which brings to earth peace and 
good will, and is glad tidings of great joy, fills heaven, we may 
suppose, with a joy otherwise unknown. 

The view of the atonement thus briefly outlined is, we 
believe, the generally accepted one among Cumberland Presby- 
terians. It is at once rational and scriptural. It honors God, 
harmonizes with man's nature and spiritual needs, and so 
justifies itself to his understanding as to leave without excuse 
its willful rejectors. The very ideas herein expressed, as to the 
nature of the atonement, were the substance of that wonderful 
system of sacrifices antedating and typical of the great offering 
to be made in the fullness of time, and with efficacy in itself to 
justify man's pardon and procure his restoration to holiness. 
On this point the following words are excellent : " The service 
of the temple, with its incessant lessons of sin and redemption, 
foreshadowed the forgiveness of guilt through a Savior to come. 
The need and assurance of God's forgiving mercy were written 
in the propitiatory sacrifices from the beginning. When we 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 



2 99 



read in Leviticus or in Numbers and Deuteronomy, the arrange- 
ment of types and typical services foreshadowing the great 
redemption for mankind, and note the part which each indi- 
vidual Hebrew had to perform with them — priest, ruler, and all 
the common congregation alike required to lay their hand on 
the head of the sin-offering, confessing their guilt, ... it is as 
if we heard the sweet hymn of Watts rising on the air of the 
desert : 

* My faith would lay her hand 

On that dear head of Thine, 
While like a penitent I stand, 

And there confess my sin.' 

" They brought their own offerings, and slew the victims with 
their own hands, acknowledging their guilt, and casting them- 
selves on God's forgiving mercy." 

As the sin and the trespass offerings were for the expiation of 
the sins of those offering them, so, " the blood of Jesus Christ, 
his Son," meritoriously and in fact, " cleanseth us from all sin," 
being in itself, as synonymous with his sufferings and death, a 
consideration on account of which God can be just in justi- 
fying, or treating as free from guilt, every soul that accepts 
Christ and walks in newness of life through him. 

As evidence of the harmony of these views with the current 
doctrinal views of the Church, the following passage from Rev. 
J. M. Hubbert's tract, entitled, The Atonement, is cited with 
much satisfaction : " Sin deserves punishment, and God could 
not let it go unpunished, without appearing to be unrighteous, 
or unjust. And yet he was graciously inclined to spare the 
sinner. Here was the problem, therefore, how to pardon the 
transgressor, and at the same time show the divine justice. 
Through the death of Jesus both objects are accomplished, God 
manifesting his justice while justifying him that believes in 
Jesus. God's righteousness is thus shown to be sin-condemning 
and at the same time sin-forgiving." 



300 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Dr. T. C. Blake thus sums up his views of " the necessity of the 
atonement : " (a) to show God's abhorrence of sin ; (b) to exhibit 
God's regard for the moral law ; (c) necessary — absolutely neces- 
sary to man's salvation ; (d) from the fact that atonement has 
actually been made. But these leave untouched the funda- 
mental question as to why it was necessary for God to show 
abhorrence of sin and regard for moral law. It must be a ques- 
tion as to an end or to ends, which finds a rational solution in 
the idea that the end of God's government, namely, the highest 
well-being of all his rational creatures could be conserved only 
through atonement, if the sinning were to be redeemed. Cer- 
tainly God abhors sin and regards moral law, because the 
former destroys and the latter promotes the happiness of his 
rational universe. 

Rev. James Craik, D.D., in his admirable work entitled, The 
Divine Life, presents a scheme of the way of salvation through 
atonement, which we thus briefly state : " (i) The entire race of 
man is by nature fallen, degenerate, dead. V 2 ) The universality 
of redemption — ' The I^amb of God taketh away the sins of the 
world.' (3) Christ hath sent the Holy Spirit to be the Teacher, 
Monitor, and Guide of the souls for which he died, and to dwell 
in the hearts of men, the principle of a new and divine life — 
the bond of re-union between God and man. (4) This redemp- 
tion from death, and this consequent gift of life, are as extensive 
and as universal as the previous condemnation which had come 
into the world by sin. (5) The divine life thus given to every 
man is a germ which does not necessarily destroy and take the 
place of the carnal nature, but co-exists with it, and enters into 
conflict with all that is evil and depraved in the natural life, 
and, if properly nurtured, will ultimately overcome all the evil,, 
and substitute for that evil purity, goodness, and every divine 
affection." 

There has been recently on the part of some of our theo- 
logical teachers and writers a disposition to discard the idea that 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 30 1 

the sufferings and death of Christ were in any sense needful to 
remove legal obstructions from the way of man's pardon — that 
the atonement did not on any account render more safe the dis- 
play of divine mercy to sinners, but that its aim, as an illustrious 
example of love and self-sacrifice, is solely to move the heart of 
man to penitence, love, and obedience. The theory looks to the 
life and the death of Christ, to find soul-inspiring example, and 
not to his agony and the offering of himself as an expiation or 
atoning sacrifice. Such a view is chargeable, in our judgment, 
with greatly detracting from the glory and significance of the 
atonement, and it affords no adequate explanation of the 
" mysterious agony of dread and terror which befell the Savior 
in the olive garden of Gethsemane," when he certainly bowed 
beneath a pressure greater than ordinary mortal anguish under 
outward circumstances like those surrounding the Savior. Cer- 
tainly the Scriptures favor the idea that in the Temptation, the 
Transfiguration, the sorrow in Gethsemane, and in Calvary's 
agony and darkness we are taught that the Mighty Deliverer 
was " verily drinking our cup of sorrow, and sweating drops of 
blood in the vicarious endurance of our load of sin, that it was 
the weight of the sins of the world under which he was stag- 
gering which made him breathe out, in the exhaustion of his 
agony, ' If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.' " 

A general atonement, or that Christ's atoning work was, in 
the same sense, in behalf of all men, has ever been a prominent 
tenet of Cumberland Presbyterian theology. That Christ died 
for all men, that God's impartial love wills the salvation of all, 
that the Spirit strives with all, and the freedom of will whereby 
it is in him who hears the gospel to determine whether he will 
accept it or will reject it, are great themes prominent in the 
preaching of the first Cumberland Presbyterian ministers, and 
handled by them with great force of logic and often in power 
and demonstration of the Spirit. The following passage from a 
lecture by Dr. Burrow, delivered while he was a professor of 



302 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OE THE 

theology in Bethel College, indicates the clear and positive 
manner in which those ministers insisted on the doctrine of a 
general atonement : 

" There are not a few who, while they agree with us that 
Christ suffered and died in our room and stead — for us in the 
full and true sense of that term — and that we are justified and 
saved alone through his righteousness, at the same time differ 
with us widely as to the extent of the atonement. For while 
we believe that Christ died for all in the same sense and to the 
same extent, there are many who hold that he died for only a 
part. . . . We feel well assured that the same amount of Scrip- 
ture testimony which goes to prove the doctrine of the atone- 
ment, and that Christ died for sinners, goes with equal force to 
prove that it was for all. . . . One truth must be plain to impar- 
tial readers of the Bible : That if Christ ever did bear the sins 
of any part of the world in his body on the tree, and did suffer 
and die in their room and stead, he did the very same for the 
whole world, without distinction, partiality or respect of per- 
sons; and we may confidently rely upon it as being the 
universal, uncontradicted, harmonious testimony of God's word,, 
and it is so believed and taught by Cumberland Presbyterians."" 

From The Doctrines of Grace, by Rev. Milton Bird, D.D., who 
wrote copiously, vigorously, and most logically on the doctrine 
of the atonement, we take one illustrative passage: "The 
atonement is the only channel through which man receives life 
and favor from God. If so, his existence and the mercies 
enjoyed by him most plainly show that he is embraced in its 
gracious provision. The whole human race take their existence 
under a dispensation of mercy ; the atonement is the ground of 
this dispensation, and therefore embraces all in its saving 
design. The atonement is not a provision for particular per- 
sons chosen out of the general mass • none are passed by and 
left without remedy under the law, to inevitable damnation. In 
its design, a door of hope and the way of salvation are opened 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 303 

to all the fallen race of man ; a foundation is safely and firmly 
laid in the divine law, government, and perfections for the for- 
giveness of sins, which is as extensive as the family of man. 
.... The neglect of the great salvation is the only reason why 
any perish in their sins." 

In like manner did Rev. Finis Ewing with great power and 
clearness teach that Christ died in the same sense for all man- 
kind. Citing John iii. 16 in support of his view, he says, " I am 
aware that some explain this text as meaning the elect world ; 
but such explanation is unsound. Let us paraphrase the pas- 
sage agreeably to that explanation, and see how it will do : 
' God so loved the elect, that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever of the elect believe, should not perish, etc. ; conse- 
quently that part of the elect world that do not believe must 
perish.' The absurdity of this will at once appear." "The 
very commission that Christ gave his disciples implies," he says, 
" the same thing ; ' Go ye into all the world and preach the 
gospel to every creature,' etc. ' He that belie veth and is bap- 
tized shall be saved; and he that believeth not shall be damned.' 
What ! damn a soul for not believing a non-truth ! Would it 
not be a non-truth for a sinner to believe in Christ if he had not 
died for him?" 

It is among the recollections of the writer's boyhood that 
Cumberland Presbyterian ministers produced in Western Penn- 
sylvania a profound impression as they proclaimed with great 
earnestness the impartial love and mercy of God, and that he 
had manifested these by giving his Son to taste death alike for 
all men, and to the intent that all might turn to the stronghold 
thus available for all. The preaching of the Presbyterian 
pulpit of the locality had been largely about " decrees," " pre- 
destination," and " election ; " and wherever it was proclaimed 
gladly did the people hear of the impartial grace of God which 
bringeth salvation and has appeared in behalf of all men, and 
many were they who found in the messages of those earnest 



304 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

preachers " glad tidings of great joy " for which their souls 
were thirsting; for no other truths can so inspire men with 
hope or so move them to gratitude and the consecration of self 
to God, as can the doctrine of God's impartial love as displayed, 
alike in behalf of Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, high and 
low, through the gift of his own Son, who tasted death, the one 
Redeemer for the one humanity, that whosoever believeth 
should not perish but have everlasting life. 

As an illustration of the stern — but consistent, we must say — 
Calvinistic teaching in the early part of the century, may be 
cited this passage from article ix. of a " Declaration and Testi- 
mony " which the Associate Presbytery of Pennsylvania " found 
it necessary" as they believed, to publish "for the doctrine and 
order of the Church of Christ : Our Lord Jesus Christ was a 
representative and surety for the elect only, he died for them 
only, and for none else in any respect ; and all for whom he died 
shall infallibly be saved. God is just and will not require 
double payment for the same debt : had satisfaction been made 
by Christ for the sins of all men, none would have perished 
under the curse ; death, the wages of sin, would not have been 
due to any, if Christ had suffered it for the whole human race." 

About half a century earlier the Associate Synod of Edin- 
burgh (Scotland), " seeing their people in danger of being led 
astray by fair but seducing pretences, did in a few propositions, 
state, explain, and defend the Scripture doctrine concerning the 
suretyship and death of Christ, ' That he was a surety for the 
elect onry, and died for none but those who were given him out 
of the world ; that his intercession is for the elect only,' " etc. 
The historian tells us that " on this occasion one minister 
belonging to the synod dissented from his brethren strongly, 
insisting that Christ died, in some sense, for all mankind ; though 
what that sense was, he never could distinctly tell." It is added 
that, as "he refused to forbear teaching such an opinion," 
though " earnestly entreated," " the synod found no other way 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 305 

to preserve unity of doctrine, but by deposing him from the 
ministry of the gospel, which they accordingly did." 

Whoever will set out with the proposition of an eternal, 
unconditional decree of election and reprobation, will find him- 
self involved in hopeless logical contradictions if he professes 
to believe the doctrine of a general atonement ; and he will be 
found saying that Christ did die for all, and he did not ; that the 
non-elect can receive Christ, and that they can not, and thus on 
to the end. 

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church has found a glorious 
mission in proclaiming the impartial love of God as manifested 
in the great provision whereby whosoever will may take of the 
water of life. In this respect, certainly, our denomination has 
accomplished a good work, contributing its part to that true 
progress of Christian thought away from the frigidity and 
fatality of Calvinism into the clear sunshine of the Bible doc- 
trine of God's love for all mankind. Nor can we overestimate 
the influence or the benefit of such progress in hastening the 
recognition of the great brotherhood of humanity as the off- 
spring of one loving Father of all. Objects of so great a love, 
we feel within us a constraining power. We love him because 
he first loved us. As we receive his spirit, so a new power 
within us makes us workers together with him, and so through 
the willing subjects of his grace is God bearing to men the 
message of his love, that the ends of the earth may look unto 
him and be saved. Nor may we suppose that even the Christian 
has yet come to an adequate conception of the measure or of 
the constraining power of divine love, 

" For the love of God is broader 

Than the measure of man's mind ; 
And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind." 

Two great facts touching the Atonement Cumberland Presby- 
terians must firmly hold, if they would be orthodox as tested by 
the Scriptures and by the teachings of our fathers : 
20 



306 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

i. That Christ, as a Lamb without spot, " by sacrifice of him- 
self once made," " taketh away the sin of the world." In other 
words, the true idea of Atonement is inseparable from the 
sufferings and death of Christ. It was in order " that he by the 
grace of God might taste death for every one," that he was 
" made for a little while lower than the angels (Heb. ii. 9). 
" But now once, in the end of the ages, he has been manifested 
for the putting away of sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Heb. ix. 
27). "So also Christ, having been once offered to bear the sins 
of many, will, to those who look for him, appear a second time, 
without sin," that is, " without being a sacrifice, to expiate sin " 
(Heb. ix. 28). " In which will we have been sanctified, through 
the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all " 
(Heb. x. 10). 

2. That the sufferings and death of Christ are expiatory in 
their relation to man's redemption. 

By this proposition is meant, not that the atonement was 
needful to render God merciful, but to render pardon safe. If 
we are to believe that in any proper sense of the term, God 
exercises government over his rational creatures, we must 
believe that penalty is annexed to disobedience. But we must 
remember that it is love which prompts to penalty in God's 
administration over his moral creatures. Penalty is a feature 
of God's administration for good, without which feature highest 
well-being could not be secured. By atonement, then, we are to 
understand such a substitution for the infliction of the penalty 
upon the guilty as will fully as well secure that for which the 
divine goodness inflicts penalties — the highest well-being of his 
universe of creatures rational and sentient. 

The Atonement is, on one side, an infinitely efficacious 
expression of God's disapprobation of sin, and of the de- 
structive nature of sin in his moral empire ; and, on the other 
hand, of God's infinite compassion for his creatures made in his 
own image. It was because God so loved the world, that 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 307 

atonement was provided, and it is for the same love of the 
happiness of his creatures that God can not forgive sin without 
an expedient that will, equally well with the infliction of the 
penalty of the law, promote obedience, moral order, and happi- 
ness. To promote happiness, God's empire of rational creatures 
was spoken into being. These principles are clearly applicable 
in the family and in the state — which are but phases and modes 
of his government over rational creatures — and there seems no 
valid reason why we may not say that they are applicable 
throughout his vast empire of moral agents. While we are 
taught that it is for every member of the human race that 
Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death, we may reasonably 
suppose that this display of infinite compassion and his atoning 
work make a deep and lasting impression for good throughont 
the moral universe, and thus is of boundless value in promoting 
the end for which God creates and governs subjects of moral 
law. 

The foregoing view of the subject is perfectly consistent with 
the doctrine of atonement for all men, while it does not involve 
us, on the one hand, in the error of Universalism, nor, on the 
other, shut us up to the Calvinistic dilemma of the partial exer- 
cise of God's mercy in a limited atonement, or of an atonement 
for that part of humanity which his mercy passed by and 
ordained to wrath. 

The remark of Ralph Wardlow has great force : " The entire 
word of God bears us out in believing it to have been atone- 
ment by sacrifice — in other words, by substitution and vicarious 
suffering. Of this the Bible is full. To the mind that can con- 
trive, to its own satisfaction, to strip the Bible of the doctrine 
of atonement by vicarious suffering, it might, in my apprehen- 
sion, be safely pronounced impossible to convey a divine dis- 
covery at all." 

It seems to the writer to be of the utmost importance that as 
Cumberland Presbyterians we adhere to the teachings of the 



308 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

fathers of the Church on this vital doctrine of atonement. This 
ground abandoned, we are wanderers without compass, liable to 
divisions and strifes engendered by dogmas which heterodoxy 
substitutes for God's revealed truth. The passage in Heb. ix. 24- 
28, and its connections, as indeed the whole espistle, seem to 
leave no ground for doubting that the sufferings and death of 
Christ are, according to the Scriptures, the indispensable condi- 
tion of man's deliverance from the penal consequences of sin : 
" But now once, in the end of the ages, hath he (Christ) appeared 
to do away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is 
appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment, so 
Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many (Isa. liii. 12), and 
unto them that look for him shall he appear a second time with- 
out sin unto salvation." The last clause, " and unto them that 
look for him," etc., signifies, as the best expositors agree, that 
Christ "will not appear as a piacular victim to expiate sin," etc. 
The drift of this very important passage is faithfully stated, it 
seems to us, in the following comment by Moses Stuart : " It is 
plain that the sense attached in Scripture to bearing any one's 
sins is the actual suffering of the consequences due to sin. . . . 
The sentiment, then, is, that Jesus by his death endured the 
penal consequences of sin. By which, however, we are not to 
understand that the sufferings of our Redeemer were in all 
respects an exact equivalent; but, that vicarious suffering is 
here designated seems to be an unavoidable conclusion, both 
from the usus loquendi of Scripture, and the nature of the argu- 
ment in chapters viii., ix." 

Atonement was not through Christ's holiness of life, or 
perfect obedience to the law man had violated, as Anselm 
taught, and as Hodge seems to teach, in saying that Christ 
literally fulfilled the covenant of works in the stead of the elect, 
hut, as Paul certainly teaches, it is in the death of Christ we find 
the fulfillment of the sacrificial types, the great expiation 
whereby God can be just in the justification of the sinner who 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 309 

repents and returns, through regenerating grace, to holiness of 
life. Christ's death is not a ransom paid to the devil, as 
Gregory taught, for man's release. That wondrous spectacle, 
Jesus suffering, dying on Calvary, is atonement because a 
display to men and to angels, of God's holy displeasure at sin 
and of his infinite regard for the ends of his moral government 
over rational creatures. Atonement does not make God mer- 
ciful, but it renders it morally possible for God, consistently 
with the ends of his righteous government, to exercise mercy 
by pardoning the transgressor on condition of repentance and 
return to obedience. It saves no human being absolutely, but 
does make all men prisoners of hope through him who is the pro- 
pitiation for all. Through this Atonement mercy and salvation 
are for all, as the air and the sunshine are for all, and the regen- 
erating and sanctifying influences needed for man's restoration 
to life and holiness flow from and accompany this gracious dis- 
pensation through Atonement. In its inception, its execution, 
its application, it is all of grace. As heaven opened its glories 
to the beloved disciple when exiled on rocky Patmos, he saw 
Jesus standing before the throne as a "lamb newly slain," and 
heard ten thousand times ten thousand of the redeemed, in 
sounds louder than mighty waters, chanting, " Blessing, and 
honor, and glory, and power unto him that sitteth on the throne, 
and unto the Lamb forever and ever," and the burden of "the 
new song " was, " Thou art worthy to take the book, and to 
open the seals thereof ; for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed 
us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and 
people and nation." 



310 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE GENIUS OF THE CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 

^HpHIS volume having already outgrown the limits designed 
by those at whose request it has been written, it is neces- 
sary to omit the discussion of " Repentance Unto Life," 
"Saving Faith," " Justification," and a few other topics which, 
like the ones named, are essential parts of a system setting forth 
the way of salvation to man through the person and work of a 
Redeemer. For the same reason this concluding chapter must 
be entirely briefer than would otherwise have been consistent 
with the interest and importance of the subject to which it 
relates. 

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church, like the kingdom of 
God of which it claims to be a part, came not with " observa- 
tion." It did not march out of a great denomination a powerful 
exodus numbering thousands, with leaders, discipline, and ample 
equipments. On the contrary its humble origin was the organi- 
zation of a presbytery by three ministers little known to the 
world, but men of earnest piety, and of deep convictions of duty 
in relation to teaching and defending what they believed to be 
God's truth. The work thus humbly begun has, through the 
blessing of God, as we must believe, continually enlarged, 
holding on its way through a desolating war, and standing forth 
to-day, at the end of eighty years, as a recognized branch of the 
Presbyterian family of Churches, with a membership of one 
hundred and sixty-five thousand, an earnest ministry, colleges, 
missions, periodicals, publishing house, and other agencies of an 
aggressive denomination. Surely, an inquiry into the character- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 31 1 

Istics of a body that has, in a period comparatively so short, 
achieved results comparatively so great, could not prove unin- 
teresting or unprofitable. What account, then, may we truth- 
fully give of this member of the Presbyterian family? First, 
then, to correct some false statements made through lack of 
information or of a sense of justice, we believe that it may be 
truthfully said that we are : 

1. Not charactered by " doctrinal unsoundness." Of this 
charge, repeated throughout our history, we plead not guilty, 
and appeal to our doctrinal symbols in justification of the plea. 
It is at least circumstantial evidence of our innocence, that 
thousands of the strongest divines and laymen in the Presbyte- 
rian Church are to-day demanding just such a modification of 
the Westminster Confession as will substantially harmonize 
with ours. 

2. Not a Presbyterian Church that " believes in an uneducated 
ministry." This accusation, so often made in the way of dis- 
paragement, should be sufficiently refuted, to the satisfaction of 
all candid persons, by the numerous colleges, universities, and 
other institutions of learning our Church has founded and is 
supporting. We do hold that there are circumstances under 
which it may be right and even very needful, to license men 
who have not had what is usually meant by a collegiate educa- 
tion. The founders of the Church believed that they lived at a 
time when such a step was justified by the wants of the section 
of country in which they labored. Their policy with respect to 
this matter has received the sanction of not a few of the wisest 
and best men of the mother Church. In the great demand for 
preaching in the revival of 1800, our fathers saw and deeply felt 
only what Rev. Dr. Cuyler recently declared so well in the 
columns of the Evangelist, when he said : " Three truths are as 
solid and indisputable as the rocks of yonder mountain. First, 
we must have more preachers of the gospel of salvation. 
Second, when the Holy Spirit moves a Christian man to preach 



312 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

Christ Jesus we must not tie him fast with the ecclesiastical red 
tape. Third, when ministers enough can not be got into the pulpit 
by the long regulation roads we must open shorter roads." 

3. Not a band of ecclesiastical warriors, or Ishmaelites with 
our hands against all other denominations. In fact it is barely 
possible that any Church is more ready than are Cumberland 
Presbyterians to fraternize cordially with all other evangelical 
bodies. In this respect our spirit is truly catholic and magnani- 
mous. The circumstances of its origin imposed on the founders 
of the denomination the necessity of much doctrinal preaching, 
and of frequently explaining wherein we differ from Calvinists 
on one side and from Arminians on the other. Accused of 
" doctrinal unsoundness," portrayed in books as holding " tenets 
congenial to men in the flesh," and ridiculed as being " in favor 
of an ignorant ministry," what else could our ministry have 
done consistently with legitimate self-defense and with their 
obligations to what they believed God's truth and the path of 
duty, but to explain and defend the doctrines and aims of the 
new denomination to which they gave their labors with a zeal 
that bordered on inspiration. They did not believe, nor do we 
to-day believe, that they were disputing about doctrinal differ- 
ences in themselves insignificant and practically of no conse- 
quence, but that they were condemning pernicious error, and 
contending for great verities vitally related to the salvation of 
men. That there is to-day in the Presbyterian Church a large 
party who reject the teaching of the Westminster Confession on 
all the points on which Cumberland Presbyterians reject it, and 
that they consider the changes demanded as of the gravest 
importance, the pending discussion of the question of " revis- 
ion " has most clearly and fully demonstrated. 

Out of the vast amount of material from which we could 
draw proofs of the last assertion in the foregoing section, we 
select the following report of the action of the Rochester Pres- 
byter, as it was given through the press in the autumn of 1891- 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 313 

More complete indorsement or more triumphant vindication 
of the preaching and polity of our fathers would be scarcely 
possible. History certainly does repeat. Could Finis Ewing, 
Robert Donnell, John Morgan, and their compeers, from whose 
lips thousands received with great joy the message of God's 
impartial love, now return to the Church militant, they would 
certainly be alike amazed and delighted to find how nearly a 
great body of divines and laymen of the mother Church are 
asserting the very truths and using the very words for which 
they themselves were half a century ago called dangerous 
errorists. A few sentences being omitted for the sake of 
brevity, the action of the Presbytery is as follows : 

' The principal change proposed and desired by this Presby- 
tery is in connection with section 7, which declares that ' the 
rest of mankind God was pleased to pass by, and to ordain to 
dishonor and wrath.' Some changes in this section have been 
made by the committee, but its most objectionable feature still 
remains. The words, ' God was pleased to pass by ' have been 
changed for, ' God was pleased not to elect.' .... This can be 
regarded only as an attempt to cast a softening veil over the 
horrible doctrine of preterition. It was held and voted, therefore, 
that the whole of this seventh section, both in its original and 
in its altered form, be omitted from the Confession of Faith, for 
the following reasons: 1. Because it is the one dark and dread- 
ful item against which more than a hundred presbyteries lifted 
their united voices. 2. Because it is a doctrine nowhere taught 
in the Scriptures, and a doctrine repudiated by some of the fore- 
most authorities in our denomination, such as Drs. Crosby, Van 
Dyke, and A. A. Hodge, the last pronouncing it ' unscriptural 
and immoral? 3. Because it is a doctrine no one preaches and 
no one can preach either to the edification of saints or sinners. . . . 
4. Because it contradicts the sacred word, aye, and the solemn 
oath of Almighty God. The section asserts that ' God was 
pleased to ordain to dishonor and wrath ' a multitude of his 



314 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

creatures ; but God himself lifts up his voice and swears, 'As I 
live I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.' 5. Because 
it is contrary to the tenor and spirit of the gospel throughout, 
which declares, in divers manners and sundry places, that God 
would have all men to come to a knowledge of the truth and be 
saved. 6. Because it turns to hollow mockery the free and tiniver- 
sal offer of salvation as set forth in the reviser's new chapter on 
that subject. 7. Because, in the estimation of multitudes of 
pious and intelligent people, it belies the tears of the adorable 
Savior, which, in the deep compassion of his soul, he shed over 
the most incorrigible of sinners, the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 

In view of all these facts the presbytery voted to recommend 
the omission of this seventh section, both in its original and 
revised form, and the adoption of the following as a substitute 
for it : 

The decrees of God concerning all mankind, are to be so 
construed as to be in harmony with these declarations of 
Scripture, namely : that Christ is the propitiation for the sins of 
the whole world, and that God is not willing that any should 
perish, but that all should come to repentance and live. 

" This presbytery further recommends that in chapter 6, sec- 
tion 2, the statement " defiled in all the faculties and parts of 
soul and body " should be modified. Also that in section 3 of 
the same chapter, the clause " the guilt of this sin was 
imputed " should be omitted, for the following reasons: that the 
guilt of Adam's act could not in reason or in righteousness be 
laid to the charge of his children, who were yet unborn; that to 
say " we all sinned in Adam " is to say what is utterly unintelli- 
gible and inconceivable : that we can no more become subjects of 
guilt before we have existence than we can become subjects 
of reward or punishment before we have existence ; and that 
the whole idea is contrary to natural justice and to the express 
decision of Scripture, ' The son shall not bear the iniquity of 
the father.'" 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 3,15 

The following sentiments from the pen of Rev. S. G. Burney, 
D.D., I,L,.D., the venerable professor of Systematic Theology in 
our university at Lebanon, Tenn., states his view of the relation 
of our theology to other systems : 

" I think our theology is a distinct system in itself. It is not 
intermediate in the sense that it consists in part of Calvinistic, 
and in part of Arminian tenets. It is intermediate in the sense 
that it avoids the extreme monergism of the former, and the ex- 
treme synergism of the latter. These views are indicated in the 
40th section of our Confession of Faith. Our people have 
always given more prominence to the doctrine of regeneration, 
than any other denomination in this country. They have also 
urged with more emphasis than others the necessity of trusting 
in Christ, rather than in creeds, the sacraments, ritualistic 
observances, etc." 

As our denomination is locally a Western and a Southern 
Church, we must look to those sections for information respect- 
ing the labors and the spirit of the generation of men now 
passed away. In a recent article on the " Effect of the Early 
Preaching and Life of Our Church Upon the Religious Interests 
of the World," Rev. E. P. Henderson, D.D., who himself had 
extensive personal knowledge of that early preaching and life 
of our Church, states a number of facts highly interesting in 
themselves, and illustrative of the subject under review. He 
informs us that " Drs. Blackburn and Nelson, and Rev. James 
Gallagher (Presbyterian ministers) have left written testimony 
in favor of our preachers and their work," and cites from Mr. 
Gallagher's Wester?i Sketch-Book the following passage : 

" There are among them many strong men ; workmen that 
need not be ashamed. And their blessed Master has been with 
them in every part of that wide field where they have labored, 
and has made his gospel the power of God unto salvation to 
many thousand believing souls. From my inmost soul I honor 
those men, and I will speak of it in the presence of the Church 



316 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS OF THE 

of my God. I have no hesitation in declaring my belief that dur- 
ing the last forty years no body of ministers in America, or in the 
world, have preached so much good, efficient preaching, and 
received such small compensation (financially). That Church 
now stands before heaven and earth a monument of God's great 
work in the revival of 1800." 

The following is cited by Mr. Henderson, the author of the 
many " historical facts " illustrative of that wonderful " power 
of God unto salvation " exhibited by the gospel as preached by 
men whose like would seem not to be found to-day : 

" Rev. James Bowman, of the Presbyterian Church, seeing the 
wonderful results of camp-meetings among the Cumberland 
Presbyterians, resolved to hold a camp-meeting in his congrega- 
tion. But his brethren in his presbytery were nearly all on the 
old side, and would have nothing to do with camp-meetings. 
The few favorable to the revival had other engagements. Bow- 
man could get no help. The ecclesiastical authorities of the 
mother Church had forbidden its people either to recognize the 
preachers of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, or to com- 
mune with its members. Notwithstanding this, Mr. Bowman 
invited Rev. J. B. Porter to assist him at his camp-meeting. 
This was a new departure. Porter agreed to assist on two con- 
ditions : First, that he should be allowed to preach his own 
doctrine. Second, that there should be no tokens used at the 
communion service, but that all Christians be allowed to par- 
ticipate. His conditions were accepted. . . . While Porter 
preached from the text, ' Turn, ye prisoners of hope,' the 
mighty power of God swept over the vast assembly ; sinners 
fell like men slain in battle. The meeting was protracted from 
day to day, until there were one hundred and twenty-five pro- 
fessions. Fifteen of the converts became ministers of the 
gospel." 

When so much of interest in this connection might be said, it 
is occasion for regret that we have space for so little. Having 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 317 

spent his life on the very border of the Church, and coming into 
the Church, though in his youth, quite after its introduction 
into Pennsylvania, the writer felt the need of assistance, in this 
part of the work, from those better situated to form a correct 
judgment, and hence, by personal interviews and by corre- 
spondence, has endeavored to arrive at the true spirit of the 
Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and to learn what beside it 
may possess as entitling it to the claims of individual^ among 
the Protestant bodies of America. While other kind responses 
must be omitted, we give place to the following scheme from 
J. L- Goodknight, D.D., a minister of wide observation in rela- 
tion to the affairs of the Church, and one born and reared in 
its bosom : 

"THE GENIUS OF CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIANISM. 

" i. The denomination of the county masses, by the country 
masses, and for the country masses. So far it has not been a 
denomination of the cities, by the cities, for the cities. The 
phenomenal growth and truth disseminating power have been 
largely the result of its touch with the rural population. The 
men born and brought up on the farms and in country towns 
have controlled and do yet control the mercantile pursuits and 
thought and legislation of the United States. 

"2. The denomination of a free gospel— without money and 
without price. No other ministry has done as much gospel 
work for so little financial pay or temporal advantage, as have 
Cumberland Presbyterian ministers. The same with equal 
truthfulness may be said of the men and women who have given 
themselves to the educational work of this denomination. 

" 3. No denomination has kept more in touch and sympathy 
with the changing conditions of moral advance or has done 
more proportionally to promote it. It has led in such advance 
moral reforms in the true Pauline spirit. The faith of the 
denomination has been, that when society is truly saturated 



318 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS. 

with gospel teachings and principles, then all wrongs and 
iniquities will be and must be righted. 

" 4. The denomination has shown great power and capability 
of advance and of adaptation to the growing demands and needs 
of its own people, and the peoples in whose midst it has done 
and does its work. 

" 5. Its flexibility and adaptability have made it peculiarly the 
denomination molding and molded to the genius of the United 
States and her institutions. It is the child of the conditions and 
needs of the United States Republic ; and so has developed along 
the lines of the polity and policy of our distinctive Americanism. 

" 6. The denomination has been eminently apostolic in its 
methods of home mission work. Its evangelists have gone 
everywhere preaching the gospel at their own charges. No 
denomination has contributed more to the upbuilding of other 
denominations than Cumberland Presbyterianism. This was 
especially so in the early history of the denomination, when its 
evangelists cared more for, and especially emphasized, the 
saving of the people, rather than the organization of new con- 
gregations or the propagation of their own peculiar ism. 

" 7. This denomination is peculiarly the John Baptist among 
denominations, crying: Prepare ye the way and make plain 
paths, so that the creeds of modern Christendom shall be in 
harmony with the Bible, rather than with a system of logic or 
of philosophy. The denomination has been the pioneer of 
creed revision in modern times. It is the first denomination 
since the apostolic days, whose formulated creed is based upon 
pure Bible teaching. The whole Protestant Christian world is 
drifting toward its formulated doctrinal creed as interpreted in 
harmony with vicarious atonement and the universality of the 
gospel provision. 

" 8. It is capable inherently of indefinite expansion and 
growth. Its essential gospel principles are those which are 
sooner or later to permeate the world wide Protestantism." 



CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 319 

If Cumberland Presbyterians can not claim the distinction of 
leading the way, they are certainly among the foremost denomi- 
nations in the recognition of the obligation of the Church to- 
ward moral reforms. The great questions of to-day which so 
vitally affect the interests alike of society and of the Church, 
and the numerous deliverances by ecclesiastical courts, pertain- 
ing to these questions, practically illustrate our meaning. As a 
leading religious journal recently expressed it, "Jesus Christ 
came into the world not merely to save individuals for future 
felicity, from a present hopeless wreck, but to revolutionize and 
reorganize society." " The Church is passing," sa3's the journal, 
" from the one theology to the other." It is in this awakening, 
and in this transition of the Church from the narrow conceptions 
of the past as to the functions of Christianity, with the quickening 
of the Christian conscience in relation to the public welfare, that 
is to be found a guarantee of the future well-being of society, 
the nation, and the Church itself. 

According to its spirit, its teachings, and its declared mission, 
Christianity lays the ax at the root of every tree which brings 
not forth good fruit, whether such tree be found in social cus- 
toms, political creeds, civil codes, or false systems of religion. 
Among these evil trees, and greatest of all, is the " all-blasting 
upas " of the drink traffic, which " rains its plagues on men like 
dew," corrupts legislation, and like a very Antichrist obstructs 
the work of the Church. The greatest and the most needed 
awakening that can come to the clergy and the laity of the 
Church of to-day is that of an aroused conscience in relation to the 
Christian's duty of using his means, his personal influence, and 
his prerogatives as a citizen for the removal of this and other 
great evils tolerated and protected by legislation, but which, as 
the Bible expressly declares, the Son of God was manifested to 
destroy. If in these closing paragraphs we may express a great 
and most earnest hope respecting our Church, it is that, next to 
holding firmly to its sound doctrinal formula, it may be awak- 



320 DOCTRINES AND GENIUS. 

ened to a sense of its obligation to the great moral movements 
which ameliorate the conditions of society and open the way for 
the coming of the kingdom of God. The Church will not in- 
strumentally have achieved the mission for which it was organ- 
ized, and for which Christ came into the world, until it shall 
have so imbued all human institutions with his teachings that 
the government shall be upon his shoulders, instead of being, as 
at present it so largely is, upon the shoulders of the evil one. 
Born herself because of a needed reform in theological teach- 
ing, and from the very beginning adopting a policy required by 
the needs of the masses hungry for the bread of life, the Cum- 
berland Presbyterian Church should, through an untrammeled 
pulpit, an earnest and consecrated ministry, and a well-instructed 
and devoted membership, rise in its spiritual power to the meas- 
ure of the demands on it in this crisis of both Church and State. 
Its past success and its present condition justify the pleasing 
assurance that the Church will come to the close of its first cen- 
tury in the full tide of prosperity, and enter upon the second 
century with resources of men and means and institutions, which, 
through the blessing of its great Head, will secure for it an hon- 
ored place among divinely appointed agencies for the world's 
salvation. 

" Round her habitation hovering 

See the cloud and fire appear, 
For a glory and a covering, 

Showing that the Lord is near." 



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